Skip to contents
In This Issue:
Pamela Harvey, MA, CCC-SLP, asks her patients to say “eeeeeeee” while she examines their vocal cords. Using laryngeal videostroboscopy, Harvey can see the condition of the patient’s vocal cords in an outpatient procedure with a small camera.
“I see patients with voice changes, throat pain or habitual cough or throat clearing. I see physicians who may fly in a dry plane and give a day-long lecture the next day, unit managers who are constantly on the phone or nurses working with hard-of -hearing patients or talking over machines,” she said.
This wide variety of patients comes together in the Voice Pathology Services that Harvey directs in the Department of Otolaryngology. At BWH, speech pathologists, audiologists and speech and swallow clinicians are spreading awareness about what they do for patients as May is the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s Better Speech and Hearing Month.
Adele Gagne, MS, CCC/SLP, and her six-member staff in the Speech and Swallowing Service see patients on every floor of the hospital and perform evaluations of swallowing ability and speech and language function. This includes instrumental assessments using videofluoroscopy in radiology and nasendoscopy as part of a Fiberoptic Endoscopic Evaluation of Swallow (or FEES exam).
“Our desire is always to get patients off tube feeds and have them eat orally,” she said. Two members of Gagne’s team also provide swallowing therapy to outpatients in the Head and Neck Oncology Clinic at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
The Audiology and Hearing Center is designed for patients who have difficulty with hearing and balance. A team of four audiologists provides a range of services related to the diagnosis and rehabilitation of hearing loss, balance and newborn hearing screening.
“More than 30 million Americans have some degree of hearing loss that can adversely affect their quality of life,” Sara Springer, MS, CCC-A, said. Audiologists provide consultation on available styles of hearing aids and work closely with patients to ensure they get the maximum possible benefit. Hearing loss is not just an ailment of advancing age. Some individuals who work in high noise environments or are exposed to excessive levels of music are at risk for developing hearing loss.
BWH also is committed to early identification of hearing loss in newborns, as approximately three in every 1,000 infants have hearing loss, said Peg Toro, MS, CCC-A. “Our program provides hearing screening for all babies prior to discharge.”