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Per the definition of the World Health Organization, rehabilitation is a set of interventions designed to optimize performance and reduce disability in people with a varying range of health-related disorders in interacting with their environment. Like many other fields of the health-care realm, the application and integration of valid and reliable research are perceivably highly primitive. It is not possible to accurately measure or predict the need for rehabilitation services in general, and it is certainly difficult to do so for specific demographic or geographic classes. Service providers lack the tools to make objective policy and financial decision-making at the systemic level without accurate and reliable information management practices. To gain the capacity to transform the current guidelines of the ministry and make financial changes in the entire rehabilitation process, the rehabilitation sector needs a strong voice and a solid political base to guide the rehabilitation process therefrom. The current narrative review focuses on our knowledge of rehabilitation information systems and what we know and what we want.

Arteriovenous malformation (AVM) results from development of abnormal connections between veins and arteries. This study reported anAVM case suffering from dysgraphia and dysprosody. According to the results after the trauma, the patient's handwriting was identified as macrographic and illegible, and written letters and verbs were neglected in free writing or dictation. Moreover, prosody of the patient's utterances was changed. Finally, an intervention was conducted to improve the writing impairments whereby they eventually enhanced. AVM can adversely affect communication opportunities and working life due to these impairments. Thus referring the patient to speech and language pathologists seems sensible and necessary.

Introduction: Alzheimer Disease (AD) is a neurological disorder associated with the progressive damage of memory and problems in communication and language skills. The examination of language in AD was less studied; therefore, this research aimed to compare linguistic characteristics between AD patients and their healthy counterparts.Materials and Methods: A total of 32 patients with AD (16 women and 16 men) with an Mean±SD age of 77±7.41 years, and their healthy peers (19 women and 13 men) with an Mean±SD age of 81.34±6.04 years participated in this study. Both groups were evaluated with the Persian bedside version of western aphasia battery. The results were assessed by the Independent t test. The significance level was set at less than 0.05.Results: The mean scores of each test and the general criterion for the adversity quotient index were significant between the two groups (P

Introduction: In recent decades, following the upward trend of aging, one out of three people in the world need rehabilitation services during the period of illness or injury. Considering the long-term complications and high costs of treatment, the need to follow up and review the evidence to find the best care programs and extensive planning in this field seems mandatory. Registry systems (registration) in this area can provide the necessary evidence for strategic decisions in this field. Of course, launching and developing these systems comes with challenges. Therefore, the purpose of this comprehensive literature review is to examine the challenges and benefits of developing a rehabilitation registration system.Materials and Method: A systematic review, in studies published in English, without time limit and by searching for keywords in the keywords, title and abstract of reliable scientific databases Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed and Science Direct, as well as searching the title of studies in the database Cochrane data was accessed on March 31, 2021. Studies that were a possible answer to the researched question based on the title and content were examined. A total of 1924 related studies were identified; And finally, 32 qualified articles were included in this review.Results: One of the most important challenges investigated was the limitation of rehabilitation comprehensive registration systems. Other challenges include the lack of support for ensuring the quality of registration data, insufficient funds for investment, privacy and data security, the unclear purpose of registration system development, access to hardware infrastructure, lack of binding laws and regulations related to registration systems, lack of access to sufficient information. To implement information registration systems, continuous monitoring and holding training courses.Conclusion: The most important challenge investigated was that currently the health care and rehabilitation registration systems around the world are focused on single diseases (single discipline rehabilitation), which does not meet the needs of patients due to the multifactorial nature of rehabilitation services and chronic diseases. Therefore, it seems that the connection between the data registration systems with the help of a comprehensive guideline or model or the creation of a national integrated central database in the form of integration with other health information systems and based on electronic health records will be very efficient.

Dysphonia assessment includes approaches like acoustic analysis, which is non-invasive and easy to use and provides an understandable numerical output. The Acoustic Voice Quality Index (AVQI) is an acoustic model that can detect dysphonia. The Persian language is spoken by around 70,000,000 native speakers. Since AVQI versions 2.06 and 3.01 have not been validated for the Persian yet, this study investigated their concurrent validity and diagnostic accuracy among the Persian-speaking population.This scale development study was conducted from 2020 to 2021 on 180 normophonic and dysphonic native Persian-speaking residents of Mashhad, Iran. Five raters rated the samples by auditory-perceptual-judgments, including Grade from the Grade-Rough-Breathy-Asthenic-Strained (an ordinal scale) and the overall dysphonia severity from the Persian version Consensus Auditory Perceptual Evaluation of Voice (a continuous scale) to investigate both versions' concurrent validity. The intra- and inter-rater reliability and concurrent validity were evaluated for both scales. Both versions' diagnostic accuracy was assessed by the receiver operating characteristic, and the optimal thresholds were determined.AVQI-version-2-Persian thresholds of 3.47 and 4.04 provided sensitivity of 88.30% and 85.53% and specificity of 79.07% and 85.58% by the ordinal and continuous scales, respectively. AVQI-version-3-Persian thresholds of 3.07 and 3.03 also rendered sensitivity of 74.47% and 85.53%, and specificity of 97.67% and 91.35% by the ordinal and continuous scales sequentially.The significant values of concurrent validities and diagnostic accuracies of both versions of AVQI-Persian confirmed that it can discriminate between normal and pathological voices among the Persian-speaking population. Hence, it can be used for screening or diagnosis purposes.

Background: The prefrontal cortex is very susceptible to traumatic brain injury (TBI), upon which many cognitive and executive functions including planning, information processing, language, memory, attention, and perception will be impaired. Working memory (WM) is associated with high levels of cognitive processes such as language and naming process communication. In the present study, the correlation between WM and confrontation naming was investigated following TBI. Methods: The current research was a prescriptive-analytic cross-sectional study examining 20 TBI patients within the age range 18-45 years. The samples were selected from Iran, the city of Mashhad, between 2013 and 2016. The participants with a score 23 or higher in Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) were assessed through Persian naming test and sub-tests from the Wechsler Memory Scale. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS16 software. Results: There was a significant association between subtests of confrontation naming involving ‘Correct answers without cue’ and WM (P

Background: Stuttering is a communication disorder. It is expected that stuttering may have negative impact on individuals’ mental and emotional health, which may affect their quality of life. Therefore, this paper aims to study components of social phobia inventory in Persian adults with stuttering and compare the likelihood (odds) of social phobia in the stuttering group to that in the control group. Methods: Using social phobia inventory, this case-control study compared social phobia in 33 adults with stuttering and 33 age-gender-education matched subjects with fluent speech. All the participants were 18 years or above. Results: Independent t-test showed that the total score of the social phobia inventory. Its fear component has significant statistical differences between group of adults with and without stuttering. Moreover, the adults with stuttering have over two times more social phobia symptoms than that in ones who don’t. Conclusion: Our results suggest that social phobia should be considered in therapy programs for adults with stuttering. In addition to restructuring speech, a part of the treatment program should address people’s social phobia, especially their feeling of fear, in order to curtail some of the negative consequences associated with stuttering.

Purpose This study aimed to compare pattern visual evoked potential (PVEP) components in dyslexic and normal children. Methods This cross-sectional analytic study recruited 72 children, including 36 dyslexic and 36 normal participants aged 8-12 years. Visual examinations included measurement of distance visual acuity, refraction, and PVEP components of amplitudes and latencies with two different check sizes of 15 and 60 minutes (min) of arc at two contrast levels of 25% and 100%. Results Our results demonstrated significant differences between dyslexic and normal children in terms of P100 latency and amplitude of PVEP at 25% contrast, with check sizes of 15 and 60 min of arc. However, there were no significant differences between the two groups regarding P100 latency and amplitude at 100% contrast with check sizes of both 15 and 60 min of arc. Conclusion Dyslexic participants showed reduced amplitude and prolonged latency in most PVEP components at low-contrast levels. These findings may support the magnocellular deficit hypothesis in dyslexic participants, even though the parvocellular pathway remains intact.

Objectives: The basal ganglia (BG) controls different patterns of behavior by receiving inputs from sensory-motor and pre-motor cortex and projecting it to pre-frontal, pre-motor and supplementary motor areas. As the exact role of BG in swallowing process has not been fully determined, we aimed at reviewing the published data on neurological control in the swallowing technique to have a better understanding of BG’s role in this performance. Methods: English-language articles, which were published before December 2015 and eligible for the present research, were extracted from databases according to the inclusion criteria, i.e. articles related to “neurological aspects of swallowing” and/or “lesions of sub-cortical or BG relevant to swallowing disorders”. Results: This systematic review indicates that BG is a complicated neurological structure with indistinct functions and that swallowing is a sophisticated process with several unknown aspects. Discussion: Swallowing is a multifaceted performance that needs contribution of the tongue, larynx, pharynx, and esophagus as well as the neurological structures such as neocortex and subcortical regions - BG and brainstem.

The aim of the present study is to validate, and assess the reliability of the Persian version of Voice Handicap Index-Throat (VHI-Tp) as a self-reported questionnaire for patients with throat problems that could make the patients' estimation of the throat discomforts possible. It is a subscale to be used independently.This is a cross-sectional study.During this study, the VHI-Tp was administered to120 patients with throat problems related to laryngeal discomfort (51 male and 69 female, age range: 30-60 years).The diagnosis of Voice disorder was performed by an ENT physician based on video-laryngoscopy evidences and medical examination. To assess the content validity, the questions were first given to 15 experts to comment on content applicability and relevance through a Likert scale. Eighty patients rated its importance to detect face validity. To evaluate the concurrent validity, the same 80 patients completed both the VHI-Tp as well as the Persian version of Voice Symptom Scale. The VHI-Tp total scores of the patients with diagnosed throat problem related to laryngeal discomfort and of the 40 healthy participants were compared to test the clinical validity (discriminant validity). Also, internal consistency reliability was assessed using Cronbach α coefficient. The relative reliability was calculated by asking 40 of all patients out of the 80 participants, to complete the VHI-Tp twice, with a week of interval between the first and the second times. To detect the absolute reliability, Standard Error of Measurement and Smallest Detected Change were calculated.Discriminative validity differed significantly between patients and healthy participants. There was a significant correlation between the VHI-Tp and Voice Symptom Scale total scores (r = 0.6, P0.05). The internal consistency was confirmed (Cronbach α = 0.78). The test-retest reliability was excellent (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.95).The Standard Error of Measurement and Smallest Detected Changes were acceptable (0.39 and 1.08), respectively.The Persian version of the VHI-T was demonstrated to be a valid and reliable self-rated questionnaire for use in Persian patients with throat problem related to laryngeal discomfort.

The aim of the present study is to develop, validate, and assess the reliability of the Persian version of Singing Voice Handicap Index (SVHIp) as a self-reported questionnaire for singers with voice disorders that measure the patient's self-perceived voice handicap.This is a cross-sectional study.During this study, the Persian version of singing voice handicap index was administered to 115 singers (90 male and 25 female, age range: 22-45 years). Voice disorder was confirmed by video-stroboscopic evidences in 48 participants, while 67 were healthy without any voice disorders. To assess the content validity, the prefinal questions were given to 15 experts to comment on its content applicability and relevance through a Likert scale. Seventy five singers rated its importance to detect face validity. To evaluate the concurrent validity, the same 75 participants completed both the SVHIp as well as a visual analog scale. The SVHI total scores of the singers with diagnosed voice disorder and of the healthy singers were compared to test the clinical validity (discriminant validity). Also, internal consistency reliability was assessed using Cronbach α coefficient. The relative reliability was calculated by asking 40 of all singers to complete the SVHIp twice, with a week of interval between the first and the second times. To detect the absolute reliability, Standard Error of Measurement and Smallest Detected Change were calculated. Responsiveness was measured for the Persian version of SVHI by comparing the individual patient scores before and after the treatment.The SVHI was favorably accepted with no deletions. Discriminative validity differed significantly between singers with and without voice disorder. There was a significant correlation between the SVHIp and visual analog scale total scores (P0.05). The internal consistency was confirmed (Cronbach α = 0.78). The test-retest reliability was excellent (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.95). The Standard Error of Measurement and Smallest Detected values were acceptable (0.39 and 1.08), respectively. The Cohens' d effect size indicates the high responsiveness for SVHIp.The Persian SVHI was demonstrated to be a valid and reliable self-rated questionnaire for use in Persian-singers.

Context: Theory of mind (ToM) is one of the social cognition skills. Deficits of ToM in individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) impact adversely on their social functioning and generally, their life style. Objectives: The current study aimed to assess ToM skill among adults with TBI. Data Sources: The terms of traumatic brain injury, head injury, closed head injury, head trauma, social cognition, theory of mind, mind reading, and adult were searched in databases of PubMed, PubMed Central, Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, Taylor and Francis Online, Willey Online Library, and Springer. Data Selection: The inclusion criteria were the recruitment of adult subjects with TBI and relevance to ToM skills. Exclusion criteria were relevance to the other social cognition (other than ToM) and non-social cognition skills in TBI, and relation to ToM skills in children and adolescents with TBI. Data Extraction: Type of study, sample size, task name, type of task, control question, and results were the main categories considered in the current review. Results: The current review study covered 35 articles about different types of ToM impairment in individuals with TBI. The majority of the studies were case-control comparisons on ToM in TBI populations regardless of the lesion location, including story-based tasks. TBI patients are impaired in mental state inference (ToM), and non-mental state inference. Conclusion: Patients with TBI were impaired in mental tasks (ToM) and non-mental tasks (more in non-mental verbal tasks compared with non-verbal ones), which indicated that persons with TBI had no special impairment in ToM skills.

The aim of this study was to compare the visual field (VF) categorizations (based on the severity of VF defects) between adolescent boys with hearing impairments and those with normal hearing. This cross-sectional study involved the evaluation of the VF of 64 adolescent boys with hearing impairments and 68 age-matched boys with normal hearing at high schools in Tehran, Iran, in 2013. All subjects had an intelligence quotient (IQ) > 70. The hearing impairments were classified based on severity and time of onset. Participants underwent a complete eye examination, and the VFs were investigated using automated perimetry with a Humphrey Visual Field Analyzer. This device was used to determine their foveal threshold (FT), mean deviation (MD), and Glaucoma Hemifield Test (GHT) results. Most (50%) of the boys with hearing impairments had profound hearing impairments. There was no significant between-group difference in age (P = 0.49) or IQ (P = 0.13). There was no between-group difference in the corrected distance visual acuity (P = 0.183). According to the FT, MD, and GHT results, the percentage of boys with abnormal VFs in the hearing impairment group was significantly greater than that in the normal hearing group: 40.6% vs. 22.1%, 59.4% vs. 19.1%, and 31.2% vs. 8.8%, respectively (P < 0.0001). The mean MD in the hearing impairment group was significantly worse than that in the normal hearing group (-0.79 ± 2.04 and -4.61 ± 6.52 dB, respectively, P < 0.0001), and the mean FT was also significantly worse (38.97 ± 1.66 vs. 35.30 ± 1.43 dB, respectively, P

Background and Aim: The short-term memory (STM) has been studied to a great extent so far. Using some strategies and techniques to help the subject to access to his/her memory is important for Speech pathologist. Priming is a process that increases the chance of accessing to some information of memory by means of some simulations. So, primings are some words which facilitate the retrieval of the target words. The purpose of this study is comparing phonological and semantic priming on the short verbal memory span.Materials and Methods: The research was conducted on sixty-four 18-25 year-old male students in Tehran University of Medical sciences. Due to some distortion factors, including bilingualism, stutter-ing, and articulation problem, that can effect the reaction time, were determined as exclusion critenia. In additiion, subjects with difficulty in Wepman auditory discrimination were ruled out. The test was performed via the second version of programmed DMDX software and reaction time was recorded.Results: Semantic tasks and rhyming tasks were retrieved faster than the other tasks in lexical access respectively. There was a significant difference between the semantic and rime tasks but there is no significant difference between alliteration and unrelated tasks.Conclusion: The result of this research indicates that the semantic level is activated faster than the other levels and the phonological level is activated right after that. The alliteration level is the last level that activated. It has some similarities with some other investigations on the reaction time in phono-logical tasks.

Background: Pragmatics is appropriate use of language across a variety of social contexts that provides accurate interpretation of intentions. The occurrence of the right hemisphere lesions can interfere with pragmatic abilities, and particularly with the processing of nonliteral speech acts. Methods: Since the objective of this study was to assess different aspects of pragmatic competence in the right hemisphere damage (RHD) patients, 20 Iranian patients with right hemisphere lesions were examined by adult pragmatic profile (APP) and a novel checklist was introduced for Persian language speaking individuals. Meanwhile, 40 healthy adult individuals, who were age and gender matched with RHD patients, were considered as the control group. After obtaining video records, all subjects were evaluated for 35 pragmatic skills, including 24 verbal, 5 paralinguistic, and 6 nonverbal aspects, by a two-point scale system. Results: Studying RHD patients and their healthy counterparts revealed that the performance by participants with right hemisphere lesions exhibited a high degree of inappropriate pragmatic abilities compared with controls in all domains. Furthermore, RHD patients showed a trend of increasing difficulty in understanding and producing different pragmatic phenomena, including standard communication acts. Conclusion: Present results indicated that the right hemisphere lesions significantly affected pragmatic abilities in verbal, paralinguistic and nonverbal aspects. Such a pattern of performance, which is in line with deficits previously reported for RHD, proved the unquestioned role of the right hemisphere in processing nonliteral language.

Teachers are at increased risk for development of voice disorders. Because there is no published study on Iranian teachers, the aim of this study was to compare the prevalence of voice disorders among teachers and nonteachers in Iran and define the causing risk factors.In the present study, 104 teachers and 41 nonteacher participants, whose jobs did not involve vocal effort, completed a questionnaire regarding to vocal complaint and four relevant risk factors.According to our gained data, 54.6% of teachers experienced vocal complaints during their work, although this value was 21.1% for the nonteacher group (P 0.001). Moreover, investigating the prevalence of voice disorders during other periods of life was performed. Analyzing the questionnaire data indicated a significant higher vocal load risk factor for teachers (70.77%; standard deviation [SD], 29.48), in comparison with their nonteacher counterparts (27.44%; SD, 37.83; P 0.001). In addition, our study revealed the significance of vocal load, as well as physical and environmental risk factors in the development of voice disorders in teachers with voice complaints.Present findings indicated a higher epidemiology of voice problems among teachers in comparison with nonteacher individuals and introduced vocal load as the most important risk factor in development of voice disorder in Iranian teachers. Accordingly, it is recommended to pay special attention to negative effects of vocal load, although environmental and physical factors are also of importance.

Purpose: Presence of neurophysiological abnormalities in dyslexia has been a conflicting issue. This study was performed to evaluate the role of sensory visual deficits in the pathogenesis of dyslexia. Methods: Pattern visual evoked potentials (PVEP) were recorded in 72 children including 36 children with dyslexia and 36 children without dyslexia (controls) who were matched for age, sex and intelligence. Two check sizes of 15 and 60 min of arc were used with temporal frequencies of 1.5 Hz for transient and 6 Hz for steady-state methods. Results: Mean latency and amplitude values for 15 min arc and 60 min arc check sizes using steady state and transient methods showed no significant difference between the two study groups ( P values: 0.139/0.481/0.356/0.062). Furthermore, no significant difference was observed between two methods of PVEPs in dyslexic and normal children using 60 min arc with high contrast ( P values: 0.116, 0.402, 0.343 and 0.106). Conclusion: The sensitivity of PVEP has high validity to detect visual deficits in children with dyslexic problem. However, no significant difference was found between dyslexia and normal children using high contrast stimuli.

Purpose: To compare the prevalence of refractive errors, amblyopia, and strabismus between hearing-impaired and normal children (7–22 years old) in Mashhad. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, cases were selected from hearing-impaired children in Mashhad. The control group consisted of children with no hearing problem. The sampling was done utilizing the cluster sampling method. All of the samples underwent refraction, cover test, and visual examinations. Results: 254 children in the hearing-impaired group (case) and 506 children in the control group were assessed. The mean spherical equivalent was 1.7 ± 1.9 D in the case group, which was significantly different from the control group (0.2 ± 1.5) (P < 0.001). The prevalence of hyperopia was 57.15% and 21.5% in deaf and normal children, respectively, but myopia was mostly seen in the control group (5.5% versus 11.9%, P = 0.007). The mean cylinder was 0.65 ± 1.3 D and 0.43 ± 0.62 D in deaf and normal subjects, respectively (P = 0.002). 12.2% of deaf subjects and 1.2% of normal subjects were amblyopic (P < 0.001), and the prevalence of strabismus was 3.1% in the case group and 2.6% in the control group (P = 0.645). Conclusion: In a comparison of children of the same ages, hearing-impaired children have significantly more eye problems; therefore, a possible relation between deafness and eye problems must exist. Paying attention to eye health assessment in hearing-impaired children may help prevent adding eye problems to hearing difficulties.