Referred speech-language and hearing complaints in the western region of São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:The aim of this study was to characterize the epidemiological profile of the population attending primary health care units in the western region of the city of São Paulo, Brazil, highlighting referred speech-language and hearing complaints.METHOD:This investigation was a cross-sectional observational study conducted in primary health care units. Household surveys were conducted and information was obtained from approximately 2602 individuals, including (but not limited to) data related to education, family income, health issues, access to public services and access to health services. The speech-language and hearing complaints were identified from specific questions.RESULTS:Our results revealed that the populations participating in the survey were heterogeneous in terms of their demographic and economic characteristics. The prevalence of referred speech-language and hearing complaints in this population was 10%, and only half the users of the public health system in the studied region who had complaints were monitored or received specific treatment.CONCLUSIONS:The results demonstrate the importance of using population surveys to identify speech-language and hearing complaints at the level of primary health care. Moreover, these findings highlight the need to reorganize the speech-language pathology and audiology service in the western region of São Paulo, as well as the need to improve the Family Health Strategy in areas that do not have a complete coverage, in order to expand and improve the territorial diagnostics and the speech-language pathology and audiology actions related to the prevention, identification, and rehabilitation of human communication disorders.

Prevalência de alterações fonoaudiológicas na infância na região oeste de São Paulo

“…The epidemiological knowledge of these disorders offers the support needed for the implementation of organized actions to minimize their effects (2) . Thus, it is important that pediatricians, researchers and health executives have knowledge about the prevalence and incidence of child speech-language disorders (3) . The international literature about the prevalence of communication disorders records that, among preschoolers and schoolchildren, 2.44% have communication disorders; that 61% of 24-months old children display expressive speech disorders; and that, in between 13% and 22% of children, late talker was associated with other neurodevelopmental disorders (4,5) .…”

Association between language and hearing disorders – risk identification

“…Additionally, socioeconomic status should be considered 12 , 13 , 23 - 26 , as this variable may explain the greater failure rates observed on the language tests in our study relative to previous studies. In the current research, most of the participants belonged to economic class E (the lowest economic class according to the Brazilian classification), and most of the parents had not completed primary education, which differs from many of the previous studies 13 , 23 - 26 .…”

Brazilian phonoaudiology telepractice before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…This distribution follows Brazilian Phonoaudiology´s history, which started in educational activities, 15 and with the national curriculum guidelines, that provides a broad scope of subjects in language and linguistics 16,17 . This history and characteristics may also be associated with the largest prevalence of language disorders [18][19][20] .…”