Speech Therapy

Speech Assessment and Therapy after Thyroid Surgery

Multidisciplinary approach to the voice recovery is important aspect after thyroid surgery. The risk of injury to the Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve resulting in vocal cord paralysis is very small and happens in about 1% of the patients.

Temporally voice disturbance for several days after the surgery happens in about 15-20% of the patients and last for about 1 week. Appropriate voice utilization (not to over use it after the surgery) and strengthening of the voice after surgery will speed up the recovery. It is possible with specially design exercises that developed by our speech therapy team at Jersey Shore University Medical Center. Every patient will have an opportunity to see speech therapist before (to document the baseline) and after the surgery. Small group of the patients will have such complains as “through feel tired”, “through become sore”, inability to raise the voice or shortness of breaths during speaking. Those patients will benefit from short course of speech therapy.

Speech pathologists Marcy Manegold-Engel and Margaret Sweeney have developed unique computer based speech assessment and treatment protocols specifically for patients who underwent thyroid surgery.

Speech pathologist during a therapy session with patient after thyroid surgery

Speech Pathology Program at JSUMC

Contact information:

JSUMC-REHABILITATION, SPEECH THERAPY JERSEY SHORE UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER 1945 ROUTE 33 NEPTUNE, NJ 07753 Phone 732-776-4508