International Journal of Speech & Language Pathology and Audiology

Noise Exposure Levels from Extended Workshifts

Alberto Behar — 2022-03-01

Noise exposure level is the magnitude used to assess the risk of occupational hearing loss. For that reason, its correct measurement and interpretation are of utmost importance. A common practice is to perform the measurement during a representative period of time, generally during an entire workshift, and to assume that the acoustic environment repeats for the rest of the weeks, months, and years. Unfortunately, this assumption is not always accurate. This paper focuses on workshifts of durations other than 8 hours. It presents a novel approach when dealing with seasonal workers and those active for only part of the year.

Failure of Gan CRM Overcome by Successful Semont Manoeuvre in BPPV Post Head Trauma: A Case Study

Zuraida Zainun — 2022-03-01

Objective: Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) is one of common peripheral vestibular problem reported that head injury is one of common cause among young age. In current situation it only treated by medication or injection by medical officer and specialist. Medication is not an optimal treatment and it only symptomatic therapy and often need chronic prescriptions if not treated properly. There are an optimum specific manoeuvre offers curative therapy in majority of BPPV cases such as Epley’s manoeuvre, Gan Canal repositioning Manoeuvrer (CRM) and Semont manoeuvre. Semont manoeuvre is one of selected manoeuvre that recently done in posterior BBPV case if Epley’s and Gan CRM failed, but less practice among our clinician due to less exposure.

Case Studies: A 22 -year-old gentleman, complain of imbalance, difficulty in walking and vertigo for the past few days. He history of moderate traumatic brain injury (left parietooccipital Epidural Haemorrhage) and surgical intervention done last 5 days ago. He also complained of reduced hearing and on off left tinnitus over left side. No prominent psychological involvement reported.

Detail physical and balance assessment done using BAL EX Foam test Modified Dix Hallpike Test (DHT) done. During the left DHT there is rotatory up beating nystagmus then it proceeds with GRM three-time, 1 session on previous day and 2 session on the current day but it was failed. Then proceed with Semont manoeuvre by specialist in vestibular rehabilitation. After 10 minutes of manoeuvre, modified DHT done and show negative result found there is no nystagmus.

Cognitive-Linguistic Difficulties in COVID-19: A Longitudinal Case Study

Louise Cummings — 2022-03-01

This case study examines a 44-year-old woman who contracted SARS-CoV-2 in early 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. She was first examined by the author in January 2021. By that stage, it was apparent she had not made a complete recovery from her COVID infection and had gone on to develop the long COVID syndrome. Her predominant symptoms were fatigue and marked “brain fog”. As well as causing considerable distress, these symptoms were preventing her from resuming her occupational role as a community nurse working in a district nursing team. On assessment by the author, significant difficulties were evident in immediate and delayed verbal recall, the informativeness of spoken discourse, and verbal fluency. The author and woman communicated regularly between January and July 2021. Although some improvement in her condition was reported during this time, it was not sufficient for her to return to work and resume other daily activities. The author assessed her again at the end of July 2021 and reported a moderate improvement in her earlier cognitive-linguistic performance. This case study examines the onset and progression of this woman’s COVID illness, with particular focus on the cognitive-linguistic difficulties that remain her most persistent and troubling symptom.

A Dementia with Lewy Bodies Patient Presents Primary Progressive Aphasia

Kazuo Abe — 2022-03-01

Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is a popular cause of dementia that clinically manifests as dementia with any combination of parkinsonism, psychosis, delusion, hallucination and pareidolia and rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (RBD). However, aphasia is not its suggestive diagnostic feature. Another hand, primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a neurological syndrome in which language capabilities become slowly and progressively impaired. PPA can be divided into three variants: the agrammatic variant (PPA-G), the semantic variant (PPA-S), and the logopenic variant (PPA-L). Mesulam suggested frequent associations between PPA-G and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), between the PPA-S and FTLD, and between PPA-L and AD.

The PPA-L is characterized by fluent but sparse spontaneous speech caused by word finding difficulty and severely impaired sentence repetition. Accumulated evidence suggests that a wide variety of disorders including DLB can develop PPA. We report a DLB patient with PPA-L.