New publication from the EST team

Our Cochrane review “Non‐pharmacological interventions for stuttering in children six years and younger” has just been published! You can find the review here: https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD013489.pub2/full

The aim of this review was to investigate whether treatment for stuttering can improve speech fluency, children's communication attitudes and the impact on the child's quality of life, and potential harmful effects in children aged six years and younger, both in the short‐ and long‐term. We identified four eligible RCTs, all of which compared the Lidcombe Program to a wait‐list control group. In total, 151 children aged between two and six years participated in the four included studies. As we state in the review, there is a need for further studies from independent researchers to evaluate the effect of interventions for stuttering. While RCTs assessing other stuttering interventions than the Lidcombe Program have been published since the early to mid 2010s, these studies have investigated the comparative effectiveness of two or more interventions. However, we highlight the critical need for future research to rigorously investigate the effect of intervention programmes for stuttering compared to a no intervention control group to determine whether these interventions are more effective than natural recovery.

PhD candidate Åse Sjøstrand is first author on the review, with a great team of EST-members as co-authors. In addition, the Cochrane Developmental, Psychosocial and Learning Problems group has provided highly appreciated help and support during the process of conducting and writing up the review. This also includes support on use of the brand new RoB 2 tool for assessing Risk of Bias, developed by the Cochrane team. You can read about the tool here: https://methods.cochrane.org/risk-bias-2