Caracterização de pacientes atendidos em um ambulatório-escola de Fonoaudiologia

Abstract

Introduction: Research on the characterization of patients, health conditions, demands and speech therapy services allow the targeting of actions, preparation of policies and development of resources to increase the quality of care. Purpose: Characterize the patients in a Speech-Language Pathology clinic, oral language area, at a university hospital, and verify the association between speech and language diagnosis and sociodemographic data. Methods: Data were collected from medical records of patients at the Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology clinic, children’s oral language area, from Clinic Hospital of Federal University of Minas Gerais State. The descriptive analysis of the data was done through the frequency distribution of the categorical variables and analysis of the measures of central tendency and dispersion of the continuous variables, and analysis of association through the tests Pearson’s chi-square and Kruskal-Wallis. Results: The patients’ profile was characterized by the prevalence of males, average of 6,70 years, public schools’ students, coming from the metropolitan region and regionals with low socioeconomic indicators, that participate in medical monitoring and speech therapy simultaneously, diagnosis made at preschool age and a higher occurrence of language disorders associated with other conditions. There was an association between speech therapy diagnosis and age at the time of diagnosis. Conclusion: The study contributes to the knowledge of the sociodemographic profile of the population assisted, favoring the organization and optimization of the assistance according to the users’ demands, streamlining the service and providing more turnover and coverage to the public.