Identification and remediation of pediatric fluency and voice disorders.

Early identification of pediatric disfluency and voice disorders is advisable because these disorders may progress to lifelong communicative impairments if left untreated. Especially with disfluency or stuttering, it is critical that an informed differential diagnosis be made to determine whether a speech pattern represents normal disfluency or actual stuttering. Voice disorders can be overlooked as laryngitis, when in fact the problem may be organic in origin. This article describes characteristics of both disorders, etiologic factors, and checklists to assess children for referral to an otolaryngologist and/or speech-language pathologist. Medical and therapeutic treatment recommendations also are discussed.