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The guest speaker at the Young Onset Support Group of Maryland's quarterly meeting was Celia Bassich, assistant professor of speech therapy at Towson University. Her topic was, "Speech Therapy for Parkinson's Disease: Present Therapies and Future Possibilities". The main therapy she concentrated on was the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT). Following are the major points of her presentation: - Over 300 people with Parkinson's disease have been treated. - The LSVT improves both the voice and speech of individuals with Parkinson's disease by treating the underlying physical pathologies associated with the disordered voice. - Treatment focuses on improving loans and thus and immediate carryover into daily communication enabling patients to maintain and/or improve their oral communication. - The LSVT is administered on an intensive schedule of 16 individual sessions in one month. - 90 percent of patients improve from pre- to post-treatment. - Approximately 80 percent of patients maintain treatment improvements in their voice for 6-12 months post-treatment. - ALL patients report improvement in their ability to communicate. The email address of the developer of LSVT, Lorraine Ramig, is [log in to unmask] She then gave demonstrations of some of the techniques used in the training. I talked with her at length and will be establishing a list (with links, if applicable) of LSVT certified therapists on my WebSite http://umbc.edu/~warr Bruce