Dysarthria

Excerpt

Dysarthria is a neuromotor disorder that results from abnormalities in speed, strength, accuracy, range, tone, or duration required for speech control. Decreased speech intelligibility characterizes the disorder. The content of the spoken language remains intact, so the patient can write and comprehend spoken and written language. Anarthria is the severe form in which there is a complete loss of motor speech production.

Speech is a complex neuromuscular phenomenon achieved through the smooth coordination of 5 subsystems: respiration, phonation, resonance, articulation, and prosody. Muscular dysfunction affecting any of these subsystems causes impairments in audibility, naturalness, intelligibility, and communication efficiency. Dysarthria profoundly affects the patient and their families, as communication is integrally related to expressing personality and social relationships. Since there is overlap in the functioning of the muscles, feeding and swallowing difficulty in patients with dysarthria is common.