Profile of Patients with Stroke and Disorders of the Vocal Tract

Abstract

Background: The present work aims to characterize the profile of patients with stroke treat at a hospital located in the Region of the Mata of Minas Gerais, Brazil, considering the findings of the clinical vocal tract, kind of stroke, age and gender of such patients. Methodology: To obtain data, the clinical profile of 133 patients with a clinical or tomography diagnosis of stroke was analyzed, and the results were presented in percentage. For quantitative data average and analysis the tests were done with associations that held χ2 test, and for significance it was considered p < 0.05. Results: From the total of patients, 63 were women, accounting for 47.4% and the other 52.6% were males. Clinically, they were characterized with the highest percentage for ischemic stroke (89.4%) compared to the hemorrhagic type (10.6%). Most of them were referred for computed tomography (86.5%) and remained hospitalized for an average of 6.496 ± 7.372 days. Similar percentages were obtained in the analysis of the population in question, when considering if they had (54.1%) or not (49.6%) any damage in their speech, language skills or swallowing. There were different types of disabilities in patients with stroke. Men with an average age of 69.8 ± 13.9 presents mostly ischemic stroke, and the majority of patients with stroke had hemiplegia and abnormalities of the vocal tract, dysphasia, and aphasia. While older patients had an ischemic stroke and were presented with left hemiplegia, the younger ones suffered from hemorrhagic strokes that caused a disability characterized as right hemiplegic. Conclusion: Our results show important conclusions regarding the clinical evolution of the vocal tract of patients who suffered strokes during the period of the analysis, being useful for better comprehension of how the vocal tract from these patients evolved according to the kind of stroke, sex and age also allowing a contraposition with other future statistics periods available in literature. It can also be pointed out the difficulties in diagnosing the stroke and the concern with the immediate care, but not with its continuance or with its multidisciplinary approach, giving an evident life risk through dysphasia and the increase of permanent damage when there isn’t an appropriate work done with the patients.