Speech therapy practice in the intensive care unit of a hospital of infectious diseases of Alagoas

ABSTRACT Purpose: to describe the speech therapy in Intensive Care Unit of a referral hospital. Methods: the sample consisted in all records of the minutes book of the research site in 2014. The period data was collected and tabulated in Excel(r) (2007), analyzed using statistical methods and the results were presented in graphs and tables. Results: in the sample of 166 patients, 77 have participated in the research. 40 (51.9%) through speech therapy and 37 (48.1%) through monitoring. This number of patients assisted by speech therapy service was significant, since the average hospital stay was twenty days by the severity of the main-pathologies. Most patients that had some kind of speech therapy were discharged from the intensive care unit being transferred to other hospital units. Conclusion: speech therapy was an important help in the Intensive Care Unit, making bigger the possibility of discharge.