Abstract
<jats:p>Background. The medical speech therapist is an integral part of the multidisciplinary rehabilitation team (MDRT) of the inpatient medical rehabilitation department (IMR) for patients with impaired central nervous system (CNS) function. The medical speech therapist's activities are aimed at both restoring socially significant communication skills and normalizing the vital function of swallowing, which directly affects the quality of life and overall rehabilitation outcomes. The development of effective personalized speech and swallowing recovery programs requires a specialist to have a standardized diagnostic toolkit (MASA, BODS-1, L.I. Wasserman scale, Dysarthria Assessment Scale, CRS-R, etc.), the ability to formulate a rehabilitation diagnosis in the ICF categories, set goals for the rehabilitation stage, and work with medical documentation. Well-coordinated teamwork and collaboration between a medical speech therapist and MDRC specialists and other consulting doctors ensure a comprehensive approach to patient care. Main Contents. To analyze the role of a medical speech therapist in the second stage of medical rehabilitation for patients with CNS disorders based on the analysis of data from hospitalized patients in 2023-2025. Materials and methods. A retrospective analysis of data on the work of a medical speech therapist for 2023-2025 was conducted. All the analyzed data was obtained from the medical records of inpatient patients. Results. The majority of patients hospitalized for medical rehabilitation required medical speech-language therapy. Swallowing and speech disorders were diagnosed in different years in an average of 78% of patients with central nervous system (CNS) dysfunction. Among the speech-language pathology diagnoses, the following prevailed: aphasia (26%), dysarthria (29%), and dysphagia (4%). Among all patients with aphasia, mixed forms predominated in 63.5% of cases. In cases of dysarthria, moderate to severe degrees of impairment accounted for up to 6% of cases. The combination of dysphagia and dysarthria was observed in different periods in 14.5% of cases. A significant proportion of patients with dysphagia had severe swallowing impairments. In 6% of patients with dysphagia, indications for airway and digestive tract separation were identified. A total of 5.7% of patients required the selection of alternative feeding methods (placement of a nasogastric tube or gastrostomy). Conclusion. A promising area for improving speech therapy services is the implementation and standardization of protocols for early diagnosis of speech and swallowing disorders, as well as the development of algorithms for subsequent correction of impaired functions. These approaches optimize the process of restoring higher mental functions (speech) and swallowing, improving the quality of life for patients, and contributing to better prognosis and prevention of secondary complications.</jats:p>