Effectiveness of group speech therapy for patients with Machado Joseph Disease: a series of cases

Objective: To verify the benefit of group speech therapy in speech intelligibility of patients with Machado Joseph’s disease (MJD). Methods: A series of cases was carried out, with patients seen in a speech therapy clinic for neurodegenerative adults in a referral hospital in southern Brazil. Patients with the molecular diagnosis of MJD were included. Speech recordings were performed before and after the intervention. Subsequently, the speech excerpts underwent auditory-perceptual analysis by 3 trained speech therapists and calibrated to a Kappa index ≥ 0.90, blind to speech collections and acoustic analysis in the Praat software. Speech therapy was performed in a group, consisting of four weekly sessions of fifty minutes. Each session was divided between speech exercises and guidance on strategies to optimize communication. Results: The sample consisted of 5 patients with a mean age of 39.8 years (± 16.51) and disease duration of 10 years (± 8.15). Four (80%) participants received an initial speech therapy * Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil. Authors’ contributions: BGSA, RM, AA: Data collection, Methodology, Drafting the article. RSR: Methodology, Critical revision. MRO: Conception, Methodology, Critical Revision, Supervision. Correspondence email address: Bruna Alós brunaalos@hotmail.com Received: 23/03/2021 Accepted: 10/06/2021 Distúrb Comun, São Paulo, 33(4): 658-664, dezembro, 2021 Bruna Graciele Souza Alós, Renelle Chaya Millette, Annelise Ayres, Rafaela Soares Rech, Maira Rozenfeld Olchik https://doi.org/10.23925/2176-2724.2021v33i4p658-664 Effectiveness of group speech therapy for patients with Machado Joseph Disease: a series of cases