PURPOSE: to translate and adapt the protocol developed by German researchers, adjusting it to the phonetic and linguistic characteristics of Brazilian Portuguese. Observe the amended speech components in a group of patients with Parkinson's disease, and comparing them with normal subjects in the same age. METHOD: twenty one patients with neurological diagnosis of Parkinson's disease in the Hoehn & Yarh stages (2-3), and 10 control subjects were assessed. The protocol was translated, adjusted and applied to the subjects of both control and Parkinson's disease group, assessing the breathing, phonation, resonance, articulation, prosody and acoustic analysis. RESULTS: in the dysarthria evaluation, the protocol showed to be simple and it presented a fast clinical application. In the subjects with Parkinson's disease, we observed alterations in both phonation (85.9%) and articulation (42.9%). CONCLUSION: the study demonstrated that the protocol is an efficient tool for dysarthria assessment in patients with Parkinson's disease.
Dysarthria; Parkinson Disease; Evaluation
