Logopediskt omhändertagande av patienter med ALS : En enkätstudie med svenska logopeder

Sammanfattning: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressively neurodegenerative motor neuron disease. ALS is chiefly characterised by atrophy and weakness of muscles, dysarthria and dysphagia being the foremost domains relevant to speech and language pathologists. The main purpose of this study was to investigate how the caretaking of patients with ALS is handled by speech and language pathologists regarding assessment, treatment and counselling. Furthermore the aim was to plot the access to guidelines for this group of patients at the regional hospitals of Sweden and what directions speech and language pathologists are given therein. The study was conducted using a questionnaire. The participants of the study were geographically scattered licensed speech and language pathologists who are clinically active with the group of patients at hand. The questionnaire was sent to 32 speech and language pathologists, of which 23 (72 %) answered. The acquirement of guidelines was done through contact by e-mail with each regional hospital respectively. The result shows variation within the caretaking of patients with ALS, due to differences in symptoms between patients. However, it is noted that the core is optimising the preservation of the patient's abilities and counselling on strategies. Out of the 7 regional hospitals of Sweden 2 have guidelines. Within these are recommendations for continuous and needs-oriented assessment, treatment, information and counselling. The content of the guidelines is overall unanimous with the questionnaire result.