Objective: We aimed to assess the effectiveness of speech therapy on improving quality of life and speech quality in patients with Parkinson’s disease.

Background: Although evidence for speech therapy in Parkinson’s disease is growing, more work remains needed to explore its full potential.

Method: We performed a single blinded randomized controlled trial, comparing 8 weeks of personalised remote speech therapy to no intervention using a waiting list design. Patients with reduced speech intelligibility were included, regardless of disease stage or dysarthria severity. Patients were randomly assigned (1:1) to the intervention or control group. Measurements took place at baseline, after 8 weeks and 32 weeks (only intervention group). Patients were treated remotely by 20 highly experienced speech therapists. The primary outcome was disease-related quality of life at 8 weeks, assessed with the Parkinson’s Disease Questionnaire 39. Data were analysed using analysis of covariance based on the intention-to-treat principle. This trial is registered in ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03963388.

Results: Between March 1, 2019, and March 27, 2021, 214 patients were enrolled in the intervention group (n=109) or the control group (n=105). At the primary endpoint, the adjusted mean difference in PDQ-39 was 2·1 in favour of the intervention group (95% CI -0·1 – 4·3). From the total of the eight single index scores of the PDQ-39, only the communication index score had a significant improvement with an adjusted mean difference of 5·3 (95% CI 1·2 – 9·4) in favour of the intervention group.

Conclusion: Personalised remote speech therapy led to an improvement of communication-related quality of life, but not to an overall improvement of quality of life.

References: Maas JJL, De Vries NM, Bloem BR, Kalf JG. Design of the PERSPECTIVE study: PERsonalized SPEeCh Therapy for actIVE conversation in Parkinson’s disease (randomized controlled trial). Trials. 2022;23(1):274.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/effectiveness-of-speech-therapy-in-patients-with-parkinsons-disease-a-randomized-controlled-trial/