Catherine Heyes is a speech and language therapist

So, what exactly is SLT?In acute hospitals, many patients are referred to speech and language therapy (SLT) to assess aspiration risk. For some, SLT might offer a way to cut through the cycle of reaspiration, reinfection, and readmission.However, talking to Catherine Heyes (fig 1), a speech and language therapist, it is clear that aspiration is just one part of a much larger field: “Half of the people I graduated with went into paediatrics. Community or school based teams manage developmental language disorders, speech sound disorders, and autism.” Some members of the team, Heyes explains, work with adult patients, providing a range of care, from support for preoperative and postoperative laryngectomy to capacity assessments for those with communication difficulties. As an acute speech and language therapist, much of Heyes’ work is focused on dysphagia, which will be the focus of this article—although she points out dysphagia does not always mean aspiration.bmj;381/jun30_1/p1036/F1F1f1Fig…
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