Therapy Tools - Dysphagia Hub
Z Vibe
A vibratory oro-motor tool, designed for providing oral sensory stimulation, working on target muscles, developing sensory awareness, strengthening oral muscles and also for building the tone of muscle.
Population Benefitted: Feeding Disorder, Speech Disorder (mainly speech sound production error: articulation disorder, childhood apraxia of speech)
Nuk Brush
A specialized brush designed for working on oro-motor strengthening, improving sensory awareness, and working on tone of muscle. Also, it is useful in cases with feeding concerns due to tongue thrust or anterior spillage of food, this can be used by the clinician to provide passive support to keep the bolus restricted to oral cavity and also can be used to improve chewing skills
Population Benefitted: Feeding Disorder, Speech Disorder (mainly speech sound production error: articulation disorder, childhood apraxia of speech)
Finger Brush
A silicone or florite finger brush is used for young babies with lack of dentition, to improve their chewing skills; it can also be used for sensory awareness development, building of oral muscle strength and muscle tone
Population Benefitted: Feeding Disorder, Speech Disorder (mainly speech sound production error: articulation disorder, childhood apraxia of speech)
Chewy Tubes
Chewy Tubes are essentially a non-food (inedible) product designed to work on chewing and biting skills. Premise of their use is to provide a hierarchical training in improving chewing and biting skills, they come in a set of 4 tubes that are graded in texture, and hardness. They can also be used to provide jaw support in case you are working on tongue jaw dissociation, also an excellent tool to develop strength of jaw muscles in case of weakness even in adults.
Population Benefitted: Feeding Disorder (chewing and biting mainly), Jaw muscle weakness, and individuals with speech sound production error or feeding problems due to lack of tongue jaw dissociation.
Bite Blocks
These are designed mainly to work on the stabilizing the jaw while producing speech as well as during feeding. They are in hierarchy of width, to work on jaw widening and also to work on tongue jaw dissociation movement
Population Benefitted: Individuals with speech sound production error or feeding problems due to lack of tongue jaw dissociation.
Straw Kits
Straws designed in different shapes and sizes to work on the sucking skills of child. Hierarchy of straws can be used to strengthen the muscles of oral cavity involved sucking.
Population Benefitted: Poor sucking skills due to anatomical deficits like cleft of lip or palate.
Horn Kit
Horns or Whistles to improve the blowing skills of the child. Hierarchy of horns can be used to strengthen the muscles of oral cavity involved blowing.
Population Benefitted: Poor sucking skills due to anatomical deficits like cleft of lip or palate.
Apraxia Tubes
These are designed to use with cases of Apraxia of speech, mainly working on the lip rounding skills for different rounded vowels.
Population benefitted: Apraxia of speech (acquired or developmental)
Bubble Wands
It’s an excellent tool to develop engagement with children, to develop pre-linguistic skills like eye contact, attention also to develop vocalizations in activities like “PoP the bubble”. It is used to develop blowing skills as well. It can be used as a reinforcement while speech and language therapy.
Population benefitted: Speech and Language Delay, ASD, Poor blowing skills as in CLP