31 Jul 2015
Demands and Capacities and Lidcombe: Roughly Equal Preschool Stuttering Treatments at 18 Months Post Treatment Onset (Ep. 548)
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Dr. Marie-Christine Franken and Caroline de Sonneville-Koedoot discuss their eagerly awaited, just published, rigorous scientific study Direct versus Indirect Treatment for Preschool Children who Stutter: The RESTART Randomized Trial. A major finding reported in the study and on StutterTalk today is that treatment results for Lidcombe and RESTART-DCM treatment methods are very similar at 18 months post treatment onset. In response to a question formulated from this Stuttering Brain blog post, Dr. Franken shares on StutterTalk today that “At this moment I think it would be unscientific to claim that the Lidcombe Program is the best stuttering treatment.”
Franken, de Sonneville-Koedoot and their colleagues conducted a randomized controlled trial with an 18 month follow-up with 199 children who stutter between the ages of 3-6. All subjects had been stuttering for at least 6 months. 99 children received the Lidcombe Program treatment, a direct treatment. 100 children received the RESTART-DCM treatment, an indirect treatment. The researchers concluded that “results imply that at 18 months post treatment onset, both treatments are roughly equal in treating developmental stuttering in ways that surpass expectations of natural recovery.”
[Update – a few days after this interview, Dr. Tom Weidig at the Stuttering Brain blog published this excellent post The most important conclusions from the Franken study on early-childhood intervention.]
Dr. Marie-Christine Franken is a Specialist Fluency Therapist and the Speech-Language Research Lead at the Speech & Hearing Department of Erasmus University MC in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Dr. Franken and her team of researchers published a much discussed 2005 pilot study which compared Lidcombe Treatment and DCM Treatment. Dr. Franken recently appeared on StutterTalk to answer listener questions about Preschool Stuttering and Its Treatment (Ep. 487).
Caroline de Sonneville-Koedoot is a PhD student at Erasmus University, in the Department of Health Policy and Management, the Netherlands, and a speech-language pathologist. Her current research focuses on the cost-effectiveness of therapy for children who stutter.
Links related to today’s episode:
14 Jul 2018
What Is Early Intervention Really About? (Ep. 650)
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Dr. Marie-Christine Franken and Dr. Janet Beilby join Kerianne Druker and Dr. Tom Weidig at the One World, Many Voices: Science and Community World Congress in Hiroshima, Japan to discuss stuttering treatment, early intervention, research, and much more. They have a spirited discussion about the future possibility of turning on and off gene mutations related to stuttering.
One interesting point made was that the field knows how to make people “fluent” and the goal now is figure out the underlying mechanisms.
Dr. Marie-Christine Franken is a Specialist Fluency Therapist and the Speech-Language Research Lead at the Speech & Hearing Department of Erasmus University MC in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Dr. Franken and her team of researchers published a seminal scientific study Direct versus Indirect Treatment for Preschool Children who Stutter: The RESTART Randomized Trial.
Dr. Janet Beilby, Ph.D., is Senior Lecturer and Clinical Educator at Curtin University in Western Australia and has been a lecturer, researcher and clinician in the field of stuttering for over 30 years. Dr. Beilby has treated thousands of clients, trained hundreds of students and been awarded over half a million dollars in research funds investigating varying aspects of stuttering disorders.
Kerianne Druker resides in Australia. She is a speech language pathologist and PhD student at Curtin University. Mrs. Druker is a member of the Research & Publication Committee of the International Fluency Association (IFA).
Dr. Tom Weidig resides in Luxembourg. He is co-chair of the International Fluency Association’s Research & Publication Committee and the brain behind the popular and widely read Stuttering Brain Blog.