Speech therapist-aphasiologist is a useful profession that a huge number of ordinary people who are not connected with the world of medicine do not even know about. Nevertheless, everyone needs to know about this profession, because the services of this specialist are able to restore the quality of life after injuries and pathologies.
Who is an aphasiologist?
If the concept of a speech therapist is familiar to everyone, but not everyone knows what a speech therapist-aphasiologist is. Like a speech therapist, an aphasiologist is engaged in the restoration of speech function. Their methods of work, techniques and techniques are very similar to each other. But the difference between these professions is that an aphasiologist deals with people who have lost their speech as a result of damage to the speech areas of the brain.
Who needs a specialist?
Speech therapist-aphasiologist is needed for people who have lost speech as a result of the following pathologies:
- traumatic brain injury;
- neuroinfection;
- brain tumor;
- brain surgery;
- other diseases.
Sometimes, as a result of these diseases and injuries, a personloses the ability to coherently speak partially or completely. In order to restore speech, thereby improving the patient's communication skills and quality of life, a special individually designed rehabilitation program is needed. This is what a speech therapist-aphasiologist does.
What disorders does a specialist treat?
The concept of "speech disorder" is too broadly defined. In order to fully appreciate the front of the work of an aphasiologist, it is important to know what violations are.
Classification of speech disorders consists of three subspecies:
- dysarthria;
- apraxia;
- mnestic and semantic violations.
And each of these subspecies is worth considering in detail in order to understand how different manifestations of aphasia can be. And, therefore, the approach to each patient must be strictly individual.
Dysarthria
Speech is a complex process that involves not only the vocal cords, but also the muscles of the face, breathing, and the area of the brain - the motor speech analyzer. With brain damage, speech can disappear completely - in this case, it is reasonable to talk about such a serious phenomenon as anarthria. With dysarthria, a person retains the ability to speak, but his speech becomes incomprehensible, slurred, inarticulate.
In order to eliminate the disease, it is not enough just to develop speech with special training. Treatment includes the observation of the patient by neurologists, psychiatrists, functional studies for diagnosis and in order to control the treatment.(EEG, brain MRI, EMG, ENR). It is important to find out the type of dysarthria depending on the specific area of brain damage that led to a change in the quality of speech:
- bulbar - due to atony of the muscles of the mouth, speech is slurred and simplified;
- pseudobulbar - muscle hypertonicity or even paralysis makes it impossible to raise the tip of the tongue;
- subcortical - unconscious muscle contractions lead to involuntary cries and spasms of articulation.;
- cerebellar - a violation of the coordination of the speech process leads to the fact that speech becomes either sharp and noisy, then slow and slurred;
- cortical - impaired articulatory motility makes speech incomprehensible or completely deprives a person of the ability to speak.
Also, a speech therapist-aphasiologist should classify dysarthria depending on the severity of symptoms.
| I degree | Speech defects are practically invisible to others, and only with a special examination can deviations in the patient's speech be revealed. |
| II degree | The patient's speech is clear and intelligible, but some defects that distort speech are present and visible to others. |
| III degree | The patient's speech is confused, incomprehensible, the words he utters can only be understood by very close people or specialists who work with him. |
| IV degree | Speech is incomprehensible or even completely absent. |
Apraxia
With apraxia, a person loses the ability to reproduce certain movements and speak as a result of pathologies such as stroke, tumor, brain injury, Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease and others.
There are many classifications of apraxia that make up the diagnosis:
- by type of affected side: unilateral or bilateral;
- by localization of brain damage: frontal, cortical, motor, bilateral and premotor;
- by type of disorder: amnestic, oral, kinesthetic, articulatory, akinesthetic, afferent, constructive, ideokinetic, ideational and spatial.
Given the variety of manifestations of apraxia and the fact of the presence of an organic lesion, a nephrologist, physiotherapist, social worker, speech therapist-aphasiologist should work on the patient. Speech recovery is a long process, and even a little progress can be safely considered a good result.
Mnestic and semantic speech disorders
Semantic speech disorders are observed in lesions of the parietal and occipital parts of the brain. This pathology differs from others in that the patient ceases to understand the meaning of some words: adverbs, proverbs, sayings, popular expressions, designations of relationship relationship or duration of time periods.
Thus, the patient's speech becomes poor, dry, a significant decrease in vocabulary leads to the fact that speech, even clearly pronounced, is difficult to understand in a general context.
Mnestic type of speech impairment occurs when the temporal lobes of the brain are affected. A feature of this type of aphasia is the defeat of auditory-speech memory. That is, each new word heard erases the previous heard words from memory. Sometimes the patient repeats only the first and last word of each sentence they hear.
These types of aphasia are closely related to impaired mental activity. That is, in other cases, a person can retain all cognitive functions - the ability to remember, perceive and process information, but has difficulty directly with speech. In this case, the patient's cognitive abilities are as impaired as speech.
How does an aphasiologist work?
The services of a speech therapist-aphasiologist are required immediately after a thorough diagnosis has been carried out to determine the causes of speech impairment. Doctors draw up a treatment plan for the patient, which necessarily includes observation by an aphasiologist. After the neurological examination is completed and the acute phase of the disease is resolved, the speech rehabilitation specialist is the main doctor with whom the patient cooperates.
The interaction between the aphasiologist and the patient should be long and tight. The specialist must provide the patient with the necessary psychological assistance to keep him motivated to continue treatment and fight for the restoration of his quality of life.
The doctor selects a set of exercises for each person individually. In order not to tire the patientand to keep him interested in classes, you need to start with light and simple exercises. Lessons should not last longer than 10 minutes.
As the patient gets used to the exercise, it can be increased to 40 minutes a day. In addition, it is important that relatives continue to work with the patient at home, or that he himself repeats the exercises on his own at a convenient time for him.
Example of exercises
Aphasiologist has in his arsenal a huge number of exercises, of which he makes up a complex for a particular patient. But in order to understand what kind of exercises the patient will have to perform under the supervision of a speech therapist-aphasiologist, it is necessary to cite several of them.
- Lick your lips, slowly moving your tongue to the right, then to the left. Continue the exercise with circular rotations of the tongue on the lips.
- Trying to roll your tongue.
- Unclench your teeth, but close your lips tightly. Slowly push the tongue between the teeth, then between the lips.
- Alternately stretch the tip of the tongue to the nose, then to the chin.
- Smacking loudly, pretend to blow a kiss with lips.
At first glance, these exercises are very simple, even for a person with severe brain damage due to injury, stroke or disease. But in fact, behind these exercises is a colossal work - the creation of new neural connections in the brain. The brain has reserves in the form of unused neurons. When performing a set of special exercises, new neural connections are created, and as they are created, a person again masters the skill of speech.
Call a specialist at home
Calling a speech therapist-aphasiologist at home is often a necessity. For example, if a person is immobilized or has difficulty moving.
When choosing a speech therapist-aphasiologist at home, reviews are of great importance. After all, you need to be confident not only in the competence of a specialist, but also in his integrity.
But by finding a good doctor who can conduct classes at the patient's home, you can make faster progress in treatment. The patient will be in a comfortable environment for him, will not be tired of the road to the medical center.
The only drawback of the method is that not in every city you can find a specialist who will work on the speech of his patient in his territory. That is, finding a speech therapist-aphasiologist in St. Petersburg or Moscow will hardly be difficult, but residents of small towns will have to work hard to find a doctor.
Training
Aphasiologist is a promising and important profession. Restoring the quality of life of a person after a stroke or injury is an important part of professional activity and social relationships. Therefore, mastering this profession will give people who survived brain damage a chance to return to normal life.
Speech pathologist-aphasiologist courses are designed specifically for speech pathologists who can improve their skills. In the classroom, future aphasiologists will learn how to choose the right program for restoring speech, depending on the type of aphasia, master all the necessary exercises, and gain skillspsychological preparation for working with patients.
After completing the educational process, students will be tested, and, in case of a positive result, they will receive certificates of advanced training, and can study the vacancies of a speech therapist-aphasiologist in the labor market.
Distance learning
For residents of those cities where there are no full-time courses for training aphasiologists, there is an opportunity to get the necessary skills remotely. Those who wish can get all the necessary knowledge through the study of theoretical information and videos. Most of the courses that can be found on the Internet have a more loyal cost compared to face-to-face courses.
In addition, distance learning for speech therapists-aphasiologists often does not require any base. That is, every person can study as part of their general development or to help a loved one who, as a result of brain damage, has lost his speech.
Thus, an aphasiologist is involved in the treatment of people who have lost their speech skills as a result of the disease, along with neurologists. The speed of the patient's rehabilitation and the quality of his entire future life depend on the professionalism, patience and talent of the doctor.
