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With increasingly multicultural and linguistically diverse societies, speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are being challenged with the task of working with clients who speak foreign languages. How...

Purpose: Speech-language pathologists’ (SLPs) ability to measure stuttering reliably has been of interest over time. However, speech samples used in stuttering measurement research have varied in d...

Speech therapy is an emerging profession in Vietnam, and there is an estimated 910 000 Vietnamese people who stutter. No research to date has examined Vietnamese speech therapists’ reliability when measuring severity of stuttering in their native language (Vietnamese) and other languages (e.g. English, a common second language). Twenty-five Vietnamese speech therapists rated 20 speech samples (10 Vietnamese, 10 English) of adults who stutter using a 9-point severity rating (SR) scale on two occasions. Approximately half of the judges were able to measure severity of stuttering reliably in Vietnamese. Judges’ performance in English was poorer than in their native language. Irrespective of language, judges showed greater variability of their use of the scale in the moderate range. Results highlight the need for judges to develop intra- and interjudge agreement when using the scale to measure stuttering in their native and other languages. Research into the development and evaluation of practice and/...

With increasing multiculturalism, speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are likely to work with stuttering clients from linguistic backgrounds that differ from their own. No research to date has estimated SLPs' reliability when measuring severity of stuttering in an unfamiliar language. Therefore, this study was undertaken to estimate the reliability of SLPs' use of a 9-point severity rating (SR) scale, to measure severity of stuttering in a language that was different from their own. Twenty-six Australian SLPs rated 20 speech samples (10 Australian English [AE] and 10 Mandarin) of adults who stutter using a 9-point SR scale on two separate occasions. Judges showed poor agreement when using the scale to measure stuttering in Mandarin samples. Results also indicated that 50% of individual judges were unable to reliably measure the severity of stuttering in AE. The results highlight the need for (a) SLPs to develop intra- and inter-judge agreement when using the 9-point SR scale to measure severity of stuttering in their native language (in this case AE) and in unfamiliar languages; and (b) research into the development and evaluation of practice and/or training packages to assist SLPs to do so.

We present the case of a 46 year old woman with a giant, 23-centimeter, atypical carcinoid of the liver. A primary site for this neoplasm could not be identified despite multiple radiographic imaging studies, including a somatostatin scan, and a thorough inspection of the bowel during surgical resection of the lesion. Histologically, the tumor displayed mild cytologic atypia, abundant necrosis, and intravascular metastases, the last feature of which was identified by immunohistochemical markers for chromogranin and synaptophysin. Also described is the unusual sinusoidal infiltration, or "spillage," of tumor cells into the surrounding liver parenchyma, a feature that has not been described as far as we are aware but may suggest an aggressive clinical course. Even though an exact definition of atypia for these lesions apparently does not exist at this point, the multiple atypical features in this case strongly suggest the diagnosis of atypical carcinoid of the liver, thus far an altogether rare and vaguely reported entity. As more cases arise in the medical literature, it may be worthwhile to establish a set of guidelines to define atypical hepatic carcinoids and other gastrointestinal carcinoids, although survivorship data thus far indicates no significant difference in the prognosis between typical versus atypical variants.