Epidemiological Determinations of Phoniatric Out-Patients’ Clinic Characteristics: Community Study

Abstract

Language development requires both basic cognitive mechanisms for learning language and a rich social context from which learning takes off. Physical anomalies, neurologic and genetic disorder, cognitive and intellectual disabilities, and emotional disturbances may affect speech and language development. Persistent delay may lead to adverse effects on literacy, educational achievement and psychosocial development. The present study aimed to describe the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of children presented to the outpatient phoniatric clinic. The study retrospectively analyzed records of 242 children for epidemiological characteristics and clinical features. In the present study, most children were in the age from (2-4) years (54.0%) and (6-8) years (32.0%). In our work, parental consanguinity was reported in (15.0%) of children and family history of speech or language disorder was reported in (17.0%) of children.