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Debbie Sell, OBE, FRCSLT (born 21 June 1954) is a leading British speech and language therapist.
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Debbie Sell, OBE, FRCSLT (born 21 June 1954) is a leading British speech and language therapist.
Sell qualified in 1976 with a diploma in speech pathology and therapeutics from the College of Education in Leicester. Her first appointment as a speech therapist was at Whipps Cross Hospital, where she worked from 1976 to 1978. Between 1978 and 1981, she worked at St. Georges Hospital, Tooting, London. In 1981 she moved to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London and was appointed head of the department of speech and language therapy in 1996. She gained her Ph.D. in 1992 from De Montfort University for an investigation of speech outcome in Sri Lankan cleft palate subjects with delayed surgery.
She was a key member of the Sri Lankan Cleft Lip and Palate Project, and was Assistant Director of the Eurocleft Speech Group. In the late 1990s, she directed the speech research of the national UK Clinical Standards Advisory Group (CSAG) study in cleft lip and palate, and was subsequently a member of the National Cleft Implementation Group.
She became Honorary Lecturer at Institute of Child Health and then Honorary Senior Lecturer in 1999. From 1999 to 2003, she was visiting professor at the Faculty of Health and Community Studies, De Montfort University, and in 2003 was Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies University of Latrobe in Melbourne, Australia and the Royal Children's Hospital.
Her research interests are several and include the management and evaluation of velopharyngeal function, including surgical and prosthetics outcomes associated with structural anomalies and the 22q11DS group, the delivery of speech and language therapy in the developing world for patients with cleft lip and palate, and methods for the perceptual evaluation of speech.[ citation needed ]
Sell has worked on developing speech therapy training in Sri Lanka, [1] and she has used nasopharyngoscopy as a means to allow people to see inside their mouth while working on speech therapy. [2]
She was awarded the Fellowship of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists for “work of special value to the profession in one or more of the following areas: research, teaching, publishing, practice” in 1999. [3] In 2001, she received a Distinguished Fellowship Award from the La Trobe University/Children's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia.[ citation needed ] In 2005 she was awarded the OBE for services to the National Health Service. [4]
A cleft lip contains an opening in the upper lip that may extend into the nose. The opening may be on one side, both sides, or in the middle. A cleft palate occurs when the palate contains an opening into the nose. The term orofacial cleft refers to either condition or to both occurring together. These disorders can result in feeding problems, speech problems, hearing problems, and frequent ear infections. Less than half the time the condition is associated with other disorders.
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Shriners Children's is a network of non-profit medical facilities across North America. Children with orthopaedic conditions, burns, spinal cord injuries, and cleft lip and palate are eligible for care and receive all services in a family-centered environment, regardless of the patients' ability to pay. Care for children is usually provided until age 18, although in some cases, it may be extended to age 21.
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Cleft lip and/or palate is a congenital abnormality that is seen frequently around the world. On average, about 1 in every 500-750 live births result in a cleft. Furthermore, in the U.S., the prevalence for cleft lip with or without cleft palate is 2.2 to 11.7 per 10,000 births. Cleft palate alone (CP) results in a prevalence rate of 5.5 to 6.6 per 10,000 births. Cleft of the lip, palate, or both is one of the most common congenital abnormalities and has a birth prevalence rate ranging from 1/1000 to 2.69/1000 amongst different parts of the world.
Pierre Robin sequence is a congenital defect observed in humans which is characterized by facial abnormalities. The three main features are micrognathia, which causes glossoptosis, which in turn causes breathing problems due to obstruction of the upper airway. A wide, U-shaped cleft palate is commonly also present. PRS is not merely a syndrome, but rather it is a sequence—a series of specific developmental malformations which can be attributed to a single cause.
A palatal obturator is a prosthesis that totally occludes an opening such as an oronasal fistula. They are similar to dental retainers, but without the front wire. Palatal obturators are typically short-term prosthetics used to close defects of the hard/soft palate that may affect speech production or cause nasal regurgitation during feeding. Following surgery, there may remain a residual orinasal opening on the palate, alveolar ridge, or vestibule of the larynx. A palatal obturator may be used to compensate for hypernasality and to aid in speech therapy targeting correction of compensatory articulation caused by the cleft palate. In simpler terms, a palatal obturator covers any fistulas in the roof of the mouth that lead to the nasal cavity, providing the wearer with a plastic/acrylic, removable roof of the mouth, which aids in speech, eating, and proper air flow.
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Velopharyngeal insufficiency is a disorder of structure that causes a failure of the velum to close against the posterior pharyngeal wall during speech in order to close off the nose during oral speech production. This is important because speech requires sound and airflow to be directed into the oral cavity (mouth) for the production of all speech sound with the exception of nasal sounds. If complete closure does not occur during speech, this can cause hypernasality and/or audible nasal emission during speech. In addition, there may be inadequate airflow to produce most consonants, making them sound weak or omitted.
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Speech Pathology Australia (SPA) is the national peak body for the speech pathology profession in Australia.
Hypernasal speech is a disorder that causes abnormal resonance in a human's voice due to increased airflow through the nose during speech. It is caused by an open nasal cavity resulting from an incomplete closure of the soft palate and/or velopharyngeal sphincter. In normal speech, nasality is referred to as nasalization and is a linguistic category that can apply to vowels or consonants in a specific language. The primary underlying physical variable determining the degree of nasality in normal speech is the opening and closing of a velopharyngeal passage way between the oral vocal tract and the nasal vocal tract. In the normal vocal tract anatomy, this opening is controlled by lowering and raising the velum or soft palate, to open or close, respectively, the velopharyngeal passageway.
Muriel Elizabeth Morley (1899–1993) was an English speech and language therapist who specialised in the management of cleft palate. She was the president of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.
The Craniofacial Society of Great Britain and Ireland (CFSGBI), commonly known as the Craniofacial Society, is a professional organisation and charity dedicated to the study of cleft lip and palate and other craniofacial anomalies based at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in London in the United Kingdom. The Society first convened in 1970 and continued to meet on an ad hoc basis, leading to its formal constitutional establishment in 1985. The Society has since grown in terms of membership and stature and has developed to become the leading professional organisation for cleft health care professionals in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
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Anne Hutchison McAllister was a leading Scottish speech therapist and teacher.
Sara Howard is a British speech therapist and Professor Emerita of Clinical Phonetics at the University of Sheffield.
Cleft lip and clip palate is an "umbrella term" for a heterogeneous collection of orofacial clefts. It includes clefting of the upper lip, the maxillary alveolus, and the hard or soft palate, in various combinations. The anatomic combinations include:
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