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Speech Therapy

Baptist Health Deaconess provides inpatient, outpatient and home care speech-language pathology - including voice therapy - and audiology services for all ages and for a variety of conditions that make communication and swallowing difficult.

Communication problems can be isolating. If you can't speak so others understand you or if your voice isn't loud enough or intelligible, you can feel alone or misunderstood. You may withdraw from contact with others. Baptist Health Deaconess is committed to helping you regain and keep your communication abilities so you can be engaged with others. We take this commitment very seriously, because we know how important this is to you.

You may need help from our speech-language pathologists and audiologists if you have:

  • Childhood delayed development (speech, speech and hearing deficits and comprehension and cognition problems).
  • Voice disorder (stuttering or hoarseness caused by excessive yelling or loud talking).
  • Vocal cord disorder (caused by overuse, trauma, vocal cord paralysis, gastroesophageal reflux, disease and vocal cord nodules and polyps).
  • Feeding or swallowing problem (common in infants born with cleft lip or palate, premature babies, children with weak mouth or throat muscles and some adult disorders).
  • Hearing deficit (difficulty hearing).
  • Paradoxical vocal fold motion (vocal cord dysfunction sometimes mistaken for asthma and often associated with exercise in children and adolescents).
  • Neurological disease (stroke, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injury, Parkinson's disease and ALS/Lou Gehrig's disease, causing difficulty with communication and swallowing).
  • Stroke (conditions after stroke that cause difficulty communicating and speaking including aphasia, dysarthria and apraxia).
  • Head and neck cancer (speech and swallowing problems from cancer or radiation therapy to the head and neck).
  • Dysphagia (swallowing problems caused by diseases, surgery and radiation therapy).

Our therapists work with you to:

  • Evaluate and treat communication problems to help you regain listening, reading, speaking and writing skills (includes hearing screenings and audiometric assessments).
  • Perform swallowing studies and train you in swallowing.
  • Provide voice therapy to learn to use your vocal cords to maintain a healthy voice.
  • Help children with learning disabilities master communication skills.
  • Improve cognitive functioning.
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