Activities and participation of children with language disorders in outpatient care according to the ICF.
Gabriela Damaris Ribeiro Nogueira, Stela Maris Aguiar Lemos, Denise Brandão de Oliveira E Britto
PMID 37556703WHAT IT FOUND
In 32 children with language disorders, records showed common difficulties in learning, communication, daily routines, and self-care.
Many of these details were not reported in the records.
Key findings
01The records most often described some difficulty in acquiring language capacity (96.9%), speaking capacity (100%), and conversation capacity (75%).
02Many ICF categories were not reported in the records, including non-speech vocal expression performance (93.8%) and making decisions capacity (90.6%).
03Age, school attendance, and diagnosis were associated with some categories: 71.4% of children with solving problems performance difficulties were 37.5 months or younger, all children with no preschool education performance difficulties attended school, and 77.3% of children with conversation capacity difficulties had language disorders associated with other conditions.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only 32 children were studied, and they came from one speech-language outpatient service. The findings may not apply to other settings. The data were taken from existing medical records. Many ICF categories were not reported, so clinicians cannot tell whether the child truly had no difficulty or the record simply omitted it. The study did not specify how severe the difficulties were. It used only no difficulty, not specified difficulty, and not applicable qualifiers. The age range was wide, from 14 months to 8 years. It is hard to compare children at different developmental stages. The study was cross-sectional and used secondary data. It cannot show that age, school attendance, or diagnosis caused the activity and participation difficulties.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that these ICF categories caused children's difficulties or that a particular intervention improved them. This was a small cross-sectional review of existing records, and many functioning details were not reported.