Does dystonia affect your speech?
Oromandibular dystonia affects the muscles of the jaw, lips, and tongue. It may cause difficulties with opening and closing the jaw, and speech and swallowing can be affected. Spasmodic dysphonia, also called laryngeal dystonia, involves the muscles that control the vocal cords, resulting in strained or breathy speech.
What is dystonia speech?
Summary. Laryngeal dystonia (LD) is a chronic voice disorder characterized by spasms of the muscles of the voice box (larynx). These muscles control the voice. The spasms can result in tightness in the throat, recurrent hoarseness, and changes in voice quality and/or difficulty speaking.
Can cervical dystonia cause speech problems?
Spasmodic dystonia affects your throat muscles, which play an important role in speech. Both of these forms can lead to slurred words. Cervical dystonia, or torticollis, may also interfere with speech because it affects your neck muscles, causing your head to twist and turn or lurch forward or backward.
What causes lingual dystonia?
The most common form of involuntary movement is tongue protrusion. Therefore, this condition is referred as lingual (tongue) protrusion dystonia (7, 8, 10). Secondary causes include head injury (12), electrical injury (13), degenerative or inherited diseases (8, 10, 14), and varicella infection (15).
What is the difference between dystonia and dysphonia?
Dystonia of the Vocal Cord Muscles. Spasmodic dysphonia (also known as laryngeal dystonia) is a movement disorder featuring involuntary contractions of the vocal cord muscles. These contractions may result in patterned “breaks” or interruptions in speech, or may give a breathy quality to the voice.
Does dystonia worsen with age?
The rest of the time, the person is normal. Torsion dystonia is a very rare disorder. It affects the entire body and seriously disables the person who has it. Symptoms generally appear in childhood and get worse as the person ages.
How do you stop lingual dystonia?
Some authors have suggested that anticholinergic medication, such as trihexyphenidyl, may be the treatment of choice in cases with lingual dystonia [1,2,3,6]. In contrast to these cases, we observed that primary lingual dystonia may be intractable to anticholinergic treatment.
How do you treat tongue dystonia?
Several oral medications have been studied to determine benefit for people with oromandibular dystonia. About one-third of people’s symptoms improve when treated with oral medications such as Klonapin® (clonazepam), Artane® (trihexyphenidyl), diazepam (Valium®), tetrabenezine, and/or Lioresal® baclofen).
What is the most effective treatment option for spasmodic dysphonia?
Botulinum Toxin Type A Injections (Botox®) Probably accepted as the main form of therapy for patients with spasmodic dysphonia, Botox® is a chemical that relieves the muscle spasms in patients by stopping the abnormal nerve impulses from getting to the muscle.