The Primary Care Speech Therapy service of the Lanzarote Health Area, attached to the Ministry of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands, attended around 8,000 consultations. Specifically, it carried out a total of 7,926 consultations during 2024, which represents a growth of more than 25% compared to the previous year in which 5,948 consultations were attended.
This service celebrated the I Conference on Speech Therapy in Primary Care, which, under the slogan Hear, speak, think, eat and grow, were developed to commemorate the European Day of Speech Therapy that takes place every March 6.
The meeting, in which around fifty health professionals from all over the island and parents of pediatric patients of this service participated, included different presentations that addressed the main language and communication disorders and their consequences, especially in the pediatric age.
The conferences also tried to make visible the work of Speech Therapy professionals in the field of Primary Care. In this sense, a tour was made from the start-up of the Speech Therapy Rehabilitation service in May 2021 to the present and how specialist professionals have been added and resources implemented to exclusively attend to Pediatric patients and carry out a comprehensive approach to the most frequent language and swallowing disorders of the child population.
The speech therapists from the health centers of Valterra, Tías and Titerroy spoke about the operation of the service, the most frequent intervention pathologies, language and communication disorders, such as dysphagia, dysfunctional swallowing or speech sound disorders and dysphemia. On the other hand, issues such as oral functions and dysphonia in pediatric patients were also addressed.
The conference, held at the Argana Baja Socio-Cultural Center, also brought together professionals from the Doctor José Molina Orosa University Hospital, the Lanzarote Island Hospital and the Early Care Unit who presented the work carried out in the different services with patients.
The director of Primary Care of the Lanzarote Health Services Management, María Eugenia Perdomo, responsible for inaugurating the Conference, highlighted the work carried out day by day by the Speech Therapy professionals in the health centers of the island and the significant impact that this discipline has on the lives of patients, especially children. She also pointed out the increase in the number of consultations attended during the past year.
These conferences, the organizers assure, have been an opportunity to learn, share experiences and knowledge and strengthen the support network between all professionals to continue advancing in the promotion of health and well-being of the Lanzarote society.
Nearly 8,000 speech therapy consultations in 2024
According to the professionals of the service, a high percentage of the consultations are related to a speech disorder that manifests itself with a difficulty in articulating the words and with dysphonia.
Speech therapists in the care setting of Primary Care develop an important work in the prevention and diagnosis of other difficulties in communication and language, as well as disorders in chewing and swallowing food in patients with a wide age range, between three and fourteen years.
It is a service that favors and speeds up the speech therapy rehabilitation of the population in pediatric age in the first care level and allows to reach the target population in a closer and more effective way.
