What Is A Speech Pathologist? And Why Do We Need One?

What is a speech pathology? Speech pathology is a medical practice pursued by a clinician named a speech therapist, both of which may be well known by the short term speech physician. In simple terms, speech pathology deals with the analysis, diagnosis, and treatment of people with various disorders related to language, voice, and speech processes. Some of the disorders included in this area of medicine are articulation disorders, dyspraxia, stuttering, fluency disorder, laryngitis, tonsillitis, etc. This area of medicine also deals with various other issues that pertain to voice and language.

what is a speech pathology?What is a speech pathology? With the advancement in medical science, it has been found out that different areas in the brain are responsible for various human behaviours. For example, concerning speech processing, the brain seems to control not only the way we pronounce words but the way we understand what those words mean. It may further be said that our brains can store, retrieve and produce speech sounds that correspond to a particular meaning. Thus, when a person speaks, the sounds may go from our ears to our brain, and there may be the creation of new neural pathways built by those behaviours.

What is a speech pathology? As mentioned above, it is a branch of medicine concerned with the analysis, diagnosis and treatment of patients with disorders affecting voice and speech. The field is considered more broad than speech because it includes speech recognition, speech production and speech comprehension. It may also be included in the field of audiology because the voice is the medium through which auditory information is acquired.

How is speech pathology used? What is a speech pathology? How can it help patients? Understanding this question is integral to the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of many disorders affecting speech. Thus, knowing what a speech pathology is?

The definition of this field is an attempt to demystify what speech pathology is? For example, a person who has trouble communicating with others because of some speech disorder such as stuttering or a hoarse voice might be diagnosed as suffering from a speech disorder. However, there is nothing about stuttering or a hoarse voice itself that causes communication problems. On the other hand, a patient might be excellent with speaking yet has difficulty saying it because of a mental disorder such as dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Thus, the question of what is a speech pathology becomes complicated. On the one hand, we know that there is no definitive answer to this question because we still need to analyse the various symptoms to determine what the patient is experiencing.

The medical field that specialises in this field is known as articulation specialists. These specialists are concerned with diagnosing and treating vocal folds (larynx) disorders and other structures that aid in speech production. Thus, what is a speech pathology? First, they analyse the patient’s voice to find out what is causing the disorder. This means that in addition to essential diagnostic work such as x-rays, CT scans, MRI’s, and EEG’s they also have to do a complete analysis of the patient’s vocal folds.

In some cases, they may even have to conduct a throat analysis in which they will physically examine the patient and note the irregularities that they see in their throat, jaw, and other areas of the head and neck. Then, once they have figured out speech pathology, they may have to determine whether the vocal folds are involved in the problem or if the voice is having trouble getting out. Thus, they can decide on whether surgery is needed.