Complaints and diagnostic hypotheses of patients evaluated in outpatient speech, language pathology and audiology services

Abstract

Objective: To describe complaints and diagnostic hypotheses of patients evaluated in outpatient speech, language pathology and audiology services and verify their association with sociodemographic and clinical care aspects. Methods: This is an observational analytic cross-sectional study, based on retrospective analysis of medical records of patients evaluated between 2010 and 2014. The collected data constituted the number of complaints and number of diagnostic hypotheses response variables, and the sociodemographic and clinical care explanatory variables. Measures of central tendency and variability, frequency distribution and Pearson Chi-square Test were used to check associations. Results: 1032 patients were referred for evaluation and 556 medical records were included, being 181 female and 375 male, aged between one month and 16 years. In the anamnesis there was a predominance of two to five complaints, being disorders of speech, written language and social interaction the most quoted ones. In the evaluation, most of the medical records of the patients described three to eight diagnostic hypotheses with prevalence of alterations in the oral language, in the cognitive aspects of language and in the orofacial myology. There was a significant statistical association between number of complaints and age group, patient’s level of education and responsible for the complaint and between number of diagnostic hypotheses and age groups, mother’s level of education and number of conducts. Conclusion: The mismatch between the type and number of complaints reported and diagnostic hypotheses verified can be frequent and attention should be paid to this fact during the anamnesis and evaluation processes.