Dysarthria Management for Minor Groups

Florida State University

Status: Enrolling

Conditions: Dysarthria; Parkinson Disease

Treatments: Behavioral: Remote speech rehabilitation

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06593860

STUDY00003763

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study develops and conduct a small-scale clinical trial study in which the linguistic and cultural diversity of the participants is considered. Speech therapy and counseling services are provided to both patients with Parkinson's disease and their caregivers.

Full description

Attention has been increasingly paid to the "culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD)" communities which typically include dialectal users of English, monolingual and multilingual speakers of minority languages, and bilingual speakers of English and a minority language. However, among these, monolingual speakers of minority languages living in the US have been nearly excluded from dysarthria management. Most of these are first-generation immigrants who are well documented to have limited access to financial and medical services and have poorer health outcomes including communication difficulties. This creates critical health disparities in the field of communication rehabilitation.

This study will (1) examine effects of speech therapy on PD patients' speech acoustics and intelligibility, (2) examine effects of the intervention program on communication participation and well-being of both PD patients and their families. Our primary outcome measures, speech intelligibility and acoustic measures, are hypothesized to show improvements. Acoustic predictors of speech intelligibility are expected to include acoustic vowel space and voice onset time. These hypotheses are based on literature reporting (1) positive changes in speech function after intensive treatment programs focusing on vocal effort and hyperarticulation and (2) language-specific contributors to speech intelligibility in PD. Our secondary outcome measures include (1) communication participation and (2) well-being measures which will be obtained from both PD patients and family members. Based on previous research, the measures are hypothesized to show improved communication participation and well-being in both PD patients and their families following therapy.

Enrollment: 32 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 25 to 85 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Medical diagnosis of PD
• No history of other neurological disease
• Native speaker of Korean
• Age between 25 and 85
• Diagnosis of dysarthria secondary to PD from an SLP
• Self-reported typical hearing
• Access to high-speed internet for therapy sessions

Exclusion criteria

• A score of 23 or below on the Korean Montreal Cognitive Assessment
• Evidence of voice-speech disorders not-related to PD
• Received speech therapy for PD-related problems in the past one year
• Have no family members to participate in the project.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Crossover Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

---

32 participants in 2 patient groups

Intervention: Behavioral, remote speech rehabilitation and counseling

Experimental group

Description:

Speech therapy will replicate the dose prescribed by many treatment programs including LSVT LOUD, LSVT ARTIC and Be Clear, consisting of 16 sessions of 50-60 minutes duration delivered over four weeks. Participants will also be set 15 to 20 minutes of daily home practice. Family education/training will take place once a week over 4 weeks, including two components: family counseling (30 min) and family conversation training (30 min). Family counseling aims to increase the PD families' knowledge about PD in general and to identify goals and potential solutions to problems which cause emotional turmoil. Family conversation training which aims to increase the PD families' knowledge about PD-related communication problems and to raise awareness of their communication patterns, and to support the development of functional strategies. All activities will remotely occur (using Zoom).

Treatment:

Behavioral: Remote speech rehabilitation

No Intervention:Waitlist control

No Intervention group

Description:

No intervention programs (speech therapy, counseling) will be provided.