Speech & Swallowing Disorders

What are Speech & Swallowing Disorders?

Many speech, voice, and swallowing disorders require clinical care by a physician or other healthcare professional. Speech-language problems include:

Voice disorders: When your vocal cords don't vibrate normally, it can lead to problems with pitch, volume, tone, and other qualities of your voice.
Motor speech disorders: Conditions such as dysarthria and apraxia can affect the muscles of the face, lips, tongue, and throat, as well as muscles used for breathing.
Communication disorders include difficulty with any aspect of communication that is affected by disruption of cognition, including attention, memory, organization, problem solving/reasoning, and executive functions.
Hoarseness (dysphonia) occurs when you have difficulty making sounds when trying to speak.
Speech, language, and cognitive challenges after a concussion, brain injury, or stroke.
Communication and swallowing issues resulting from oral, head and neck cancers, or cancer treatments.

UR Medicine's Treatments for Speech & Swallowing Disorders

Our speech-language pathologists specialize in treating communication and swallowing disorders that can arise from an injury or health condition, disability, surgery, or developmental disorder. These may include:

We evaluate and treat people with speech pathology conditions, including communicative, hearing, cognitive, and swallowing disorders. Evaluations can often include the use of an endoscopy (a small camera to inside the throat) and X-ray video technology. Following evaluations, patients can expect to work with a speech-language pathologist to develop an individualized therapy plan together.

Our staff offers expert inpatient and outpatient speech therapy to patients of all ages, from newborns to elders. This includes speech and language rehabilitation, cognitive retraining, voice therapy, swallowing services, and augmentative and alternative communication services.

What Sets Us Apart?

We use a multidisciplinary approach to care, offering highly specialized speech therapy for complex problems.

Our speech-pathologists are licensed by the New York State Department of Education and hold Certificates of Clinical Competence for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), in addition to postgraduate training and certifications in several clinical subspecialties.

Our patients benefit from close collaboration with other specialty departments at Strong Memorial Hospital and the University of Rochester Medical Center. Team members from other disciplines may include audiologists, otolaryngologists (ear, nose, and throat), psychologists, behavioral specialists, dietitians, nutritional support specialists, rehabilitation specialists (including psychologists and occupational and physical therapists).

Eastman Performing Arts Medicine

Eastman Performing Arts Medicine provides expert clinical care to performing artists for both chronic and acute conditions. Eastman Performing Arts and Medicine offers a multidisciplinary team of UR Medicine experts, working with the Eastman School of Music, to deliver specialized care specifically tailored to performing artists.