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speech therapy for post stroke

HOW CAN SPEECH THERAPY HELP POST STROKE?

There are many ways to reduce your risk of having a stroke. These include checking your Blood pressure, reducing salt, limiting unhealthy food, consuming many fruit and vegetables, stop smoking, to exercise and to limit alcohol intake .

After a stroke does occurs, an individual may present with a vast set of difficulties. These range from the ability to speak and understand effectively, to read and write, to problem solve and to reason.

A Speech Therapist helps alleviate these difficulties by providing patient focused and individualised therapy services. We further assist patients who have difficulty with swallowing. We provide strengthening exercises, cognitive rehabilitation services as well as compensatory strategies to ensure all round effective communicative skills.

Strokes have long lasting effects on patients and their families, speech therapy offers support for those affected by the effects of a post stroke

STROKE AWARENESS AND PREVENTION

speech therapy for post stroke

What is a stroke

A stroke is a serious life-threatening medicalcondition that happenswhen the blood supplyto part of the brain is cutoff.
It is so serious because it can either kill youor leave you disabled. The important thingis that there are ways to try prevent it.

speech therapy post stroke

Risk Factors & Causes

Risks Factors:

  • Old age
  • High blood pressure
  • High cholesterol
  • Diabetes

Like all organs, the brain needs the oxygen and nutrients provided by blood to function properly. If the supply of blood is restricted or stopped, brain cells begin to die. This can lead to brain injury, disability and possibly death.

speech therapy for post stroke

Identification

Risks Factors:

There are ways to try prevent a stroke. It is important to know how to identify a stroke and what to do. The sooner you identify it and get to a hospital, the better.

Signs include:

  • Weakness on one side of the body
  • Numbness of the face
  • Unusual and severe headache
  • Vision loss
  • Numbness and tingling
  • Unsteady walk
  • Speech slurred or no speech at all or difficulty understanding you

TIA: A “mini stroke” lasts less than 24 hours. It gets better but you must still go to the hospital

It is important to identify if children are not reaching their speech and language milestones in order to understand if a speech and language assessment is necessary. Early intervention will provide your child with stimulating exercises and activities that target specific and age appropriate language goals. Intervening early can ultimately differentiate between a language delay and a language disorder.

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Children often do not get the attention that they need being in a classroom and they therefore receive limited individual support. We assist in helping children who are struggling with articulation errors (E.g. wabbit/rabbit) as well as phonological errors (lellow/yellow) improve their overall speech. Language disorders can also occur in children, some occur with a known cause and some with no known cause. Some language disorders such as, a motor speech disorder can be treated using a specialized technique known as PROMPT, this assists the child to learn motor planning. Our therapists are PROMPT trained and are able to provide this service.

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Individuals can have many difficulties post stroke such as communicating verbally, reasoning, higher order thinking, problem solving, reading, writing etc. Speech therapy targets specific areas of difficulties and aims to alleviate these difficulties in the most patient centered and encouraging way possible. Rehabilitation and providing individuals with the skills of independence to be able to participate socially and vocationally in communities is a goal and priority of mine.

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Swallowing disorders are common in individuals who have suffered neurological damage for example, individuals who have suffered a stroke, traumatic brain injury, dementia or parkinson’s disease. Swallowing disorders can cause feeding and eating to be extremely difficult and uncomfortable.  Individuals with swallowing disorders are at severe risk for malnutrition and dehydration. Dysphagia can cause a negative experience around feeding time. This can further impact the way in which individuals feel about food and/or can cause food aversions. Speech therapy assists with alleviating these difficulties by providing swallowing rehabilitation, strengthening exercises and compensatory strategies.

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As the suck-swallow reflex only develops at 34 weeks in utero, babies born before then may have poor co-ordination, poor endurance and present with a weak suck. This results in the neonate being at a higher risk for complications during feeding times. Speech therapy will provide the caregiver with the skills necessary to perform oral-motor exercises for the neonate, aiming to strengthen the suck and improve the endurance. We also provide further support to mothers by ensuring that they have a pool of information regarding feeding as well as providing breastfeeding support and advice.

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Hearing is a vital part of communication. In children the ability to hear is critical for their development. Hearing precedes the development of speech and if a child cannot hear they will not be able to grasp language. I offer hearing assessments for individuals of all ages. The hearing assessment includes a visual inspection of the ear, testing of middle ear function as well as testing of cochlea function. This is important to identify If there may be a hearing difficulty present. Knowledge about your hearing status is vital. We are able to fit hearing, clean and repair hearing aids in the comfort of your own home.

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