Dysarthia Case Study

Dysarthia Case study

The case study that I am going to explore here is a case study of an adult acquired with DYSARTHIA! The patient is 32 year old male who went through a major motor vehicle accident. He was noted of Glasgow Coma Score (GCS) 5, when he was hospitalized. He also had multiple contusions and bilateral subcortical haemorrhages. As an effect of this, assessments showed that he had reduced speech intelligibility, constant imprecision, hyper nasality and much more discomforts.

Dysarthria can be defined as, “A group of neuromuscular impairments that may affect the speed, range, strength, and timing of motor movement as the result of paralysis, weakness, or dis-coordination of the muscles” (Owens, 2011, 356). It is a motor speech disorder. It results from impaired movement of the muscles used for speech production, including the lips, tongue, vocal folds, and/or diaphragm. The severity of dysarthria relies on affected part of nervous system. The person acquiring dysarthria will show some mumbling or sloppiness in the speech. Dysarthria is mainly caused by some damage to brain, and this can happen over several reasons, such as stroke brain injury, tumours, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, multiple sclerosis. But dysarthria can also be caused since the birth, in cerebral palsy.  There are several noticeable symptoms of dysarthria such as slow rate of speech, rapid rate of speech with mumbling quality, limited tongue or lip movement etc.

There are many types of communication disorders and all have their adverse effects but the ones who are born with it doesn’t know to live otherwise, but in this case the person acquired it due to some accident and which is a terrible effect. A person can’t psychologically accept or rather believe the fact that he is lost of the basic words or even language, if he is the only earning member of family, the economy of entire family collapses, he/she would be extremely hesitant to communicate with anyone known or unknown. They will always have hesitation in even meeting up with anyone or even attending any kind of social gathering.  His morale will be totally crashed; they will get a sense of dependability for their day to day chores.

There are two main ways to assess dysarthria: Speech Imaging Techniques, which includes tomography, MRIs, Ultrasound and computed tomography. Then there is, System Wise Examination, it has Aerodynamic measures/ Respiratory system Assessment, Phonatory system assessment, Articulatory system assessment, Resonatory system Assessment.

The reason I chose this case study is because my paternal aunt has gone through a major brain stroke and now she is a patient of dysarthria. I have seen her journeys after she got the stroke till now, since then I have developed a keen interest in this subject! Actually she was going for a trip in she got the brain stroke while in the flight, so there was even delay in getting her medical help as the plane was in air. She earlier had hard time even recollecting her own name, I remember the first time I went to visit her in the hospital, she certainly couldn’t recognize me and she said something but totally made no sense! She was just mumbling some words. Initially she was only treated for her basic life because her blood was becoming really thick all the time. But by the time her body was doing little well, she totally lost her speech. She would speak hebrewish, also she had lost lots of her cooking memory as well as other. Later she was taken to therapist and ofcourse treated but even today she cant recollect the word. If she has to say banana, she will describe all the characteristics of banana but wouldn’t be able to speak the word.