Objective: To study the effectiveness of personalized speech therapy delivered by telerehabilitation, aiming to improve hypokinetic dysarthria in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD), regardless of disease stage or living area.

Background: Speech problems in PD have a profound negative impact on social interaction and quality of life. Current speech treatment is overall highly intensive and therefore not suitable for patients in all disease stages. Evidence for these highly intensive programs is growing, but still limited because of small sample sizes or short term follow-up. To address these challenges, we aimed to perform a large-scale study to demonstrate the efficacy of speech therapy in PD on quality of life and speech. To improve compliance of both patients and caregivers, several aspect seem relevant to be taken into account: home-based treatment will make speech therapy more available for patients in all disease stages, the treatment approach should be personalized and real-time feedback may augment exercising and applying better speech.

Method: We will perform a single blind, randomized controlled trial, comparing 8 weeks of speech therapy through telerehabilitation to no intervention using a waiting list design. 215 participants with idiopathic PD in all disease stages with problems in intelligibility are recruited by 14 participating highly specialized speech therapists. All treatments will be personalized, supported by an app that provides real-time feedback during speech and delivered at home via telerehabilitation. All patients will be measured at baseline and after 8 weeks. The experimental group will receive a follow-up measurement after a wash-out period of 24 weeks. The control group will receive deferred treatment after 8 weeks, but no additional follow-up assessments. The primary outcome is quality of life. Secondary outcomes are speech and voice quality, intelligibility, severity of voice and speech complaints, and caregiver burden.

Results: The PERSPECTIVE study has fully started from September 1st 2018 with the inclusion of participants from March 1st 2019 and the study will be finished by August 2021.

Conclusion: This study will be the first to investigate the efficacy of speech therapy in PD in all disease stages on a large scale.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/design-of-the-perspective-study-personalized-speech-therapy-for-active-conversation/