Prevalence of Speech and Language Disorders in Hospitalized Children in AliAsghar Children's Hospital in Fall and Winter 2013

There arevarieties of conditions including genetic conditions, injury or illness, and hearingimpairments that can all lead to variousof speech/language disorders. Speech and languagepathologists offer comprehensive services in local children’s hospital for clients with speech and language disorders. The objective of this study was to estimate the prevalence of speech andlanguage disorders in the local pediatric hospital. In this cross-sectional study the children hospitalized in the, Ali-Asher Children’sHospital of the Iran University of Medical Sciences in Tehran were selected. The selected patientswere visited by a speech & language pathologist once a week from December 20, 2013 to January 5, 2014(12-week period). Speech and language disorders were screenedand further data were collectedby interviews with the parents and/or caregivers and the children who were admittedinto the pediatric ward of the hospital. There were 339 pediatric in-patients (girls: n=146, boys; n =193) in thisstudy. Among thehospitalized children from 2 to 15 years of age, 19% had various disorders including language disorders,(10.2%), articulation and phonological disorders (7.5%) and stuttering (1.3%). Sex didn’t any significant influence on speech or language disorders in participants (p=0.7). Speech /language disorders evaluation was done on hospitalized pediatric patients to determine the incidence of these disorders. As a result, we recommend therapeutic intervention for the children diagnosed with speech /language impairments.