Specialized Services.

 Traumatic brain injury often occurs as a result of a severe sports injury or car accident.

Immediate or delayed symptoms may include confusion, blurry vision, and concentration difficulty. Infants may cry persistently or be irritable. Treatment may involve rest, medication, and surgery.

Concussion = non traumatic brain injury.  This can occur through collision (football, car accident) or severe movement (whiplash).  Symptoms are generally expected to resolve in a week or two with rest.  Post concussion syndrome is the longer lasting symptoms that do not heal after rest and sustain despite medicinal intervention.  Symptoms often seen are headache, mental fogginess, difficulty concentrating, short term memory deficits, and decline in academic performance.  Treatment focuses on building mindfulness, exercises focusing on immediate and delayed recall, mental flexibility and task switching, and visual working memory with tasks slowly increasing in difficulty based on the patients performance.  Compensation strategies are taught if needed.

We provide evaluation and treatment for specific speech and language disorders caused by a cleft palate, including articulation and resonance disorders. Session targets oftentimes include establishing articulation (placement, manner, and voicing) using articulation therapy techniques, achieving oral pressure to the best of the patient’s abilities during sound production, and establishing motor speech patterns where compensatory speech sound errors might be present.

Flexible Endoscopic Evaluation of Swallowing (FEES) is an instrumental evaluation provided by our specially trained Speech-Language Pathologists to evaluate swallow function in individuals with dysphagia. 

Treatment begins before radiation and chemotherapy start.  Following evidence based recommendations and cancer specific McNeil Dysphagia treatment protocols patients are taught exercises prior to starting treatment in order to potentially reduce the severity of expected dysphagia, sustain an oral diet longer which reduces the need for a feeding tube, and adjusting eating behaviors as needed to reduce risk of aspiration.  Treatment is unique to each patient’s needs, availability and potential.

A program that enhances the ability to communicate in patients with Parkinson's Disease. This approach builds confidence, improves ability to communicate and helps quality of life for patients living with neurological disorders.  

An orofacial myofunctional disorder (OMD) is when there is an abnormal lip, jaw, or tongue position during rest, swallowing or speech. it is a disorder of the muscles and functions of the face and mouth. 

Neuromuscular electrical stimulation to treat dysphagia. This therapy re-educates the muscles responsible for swallowing through repeated sessions, with the result of improved swallow function. SEMG is surface electromyography for facial weakness. 

SOFFI® is an integrated approach to supporting oral feeding in preterm and in medically complex infants, both in the NICU and in the Early Intervention setting. SOFFI® is guided by the SOFFI® Algorithm, which is a clinical decision-making algorithm designed to ensure all feeders use the same critical thinking during feedings. SOFFI® is the only intervention to date that followed infants both within the NICU setting AND after discharge, when parents were the primary feeders.  Additionally, it is the ONLY intervention to date that is designed for both premature infants, and infants with medical comorbidities - both preterm and term.

The SOS Approach to Feeding is a Transdisciplinary Program for assessing and treating children with feeding and weight/growth difficulties. It has been developed over the course of 20 years through the clinical work of Dr. Kay Toomey, in conjunction with colleagues from several different disciplines. Based on and grounded philosophically in the “normal” developmental steps, stages and skills of feeding found in typically developing children, the SOS Approach focuses on increasing a child’s comfort level by exploring and learning about the different properties of food. 

The program allows a child to interact with food in a playful, non-stressful way, beginning with the ability to tolerate the food in the room and in front of him/her, then moving on to managing the smell of the foods, learning about how foods feel on the body and in their mouth, and then enjoying tasting and eating new foods following the Steps to Eating.

A disorder of the vocal cords where they close when they should be opening resulting in chronic or acute shortness of breath.  Some variations are triggered with exercise and often mistaken for asthma and is often seen in adolescent athletes, but can present across age spectrums.  Treatment focuses on adjusting the source of breathing to the diaphragm and repetition of coordination and resistance exercises, symptom management, and recovery breathing at rest and in motion.