Friday, October 26, 2007

Trial Start: DCM vs Lidcombe

Good news from Marie-Christen Franken! She has now received funding for a large-scale trial to compare the demands & capacities treatment to the Lidcombe treatment. And they have already enrolled children.

They have already published a pilot study: see here. Based on a relatively small sample and no long-term outcome measure (both are essential for a good trial!), they could not see a difference between both treatments:
This pilot study compared two treatments for stuttering in preschool-age children.Thirty children were randomly assigned to either a Lidcombe Program (LP) treatment or a Demands and Capacities Model (DCM) treatment. Stuttering frequencies and severity ratings were obtained immediately before and after treatment (12 weeks). The stuttering frequencies and severity ratings significantly decreased for both treatment groups. No differences between groups were found. Parents of children in both groups were cooperative in many respects, and there were no differences between them on scales that measured their satisfaction with the two treatments. The findings suggest that randomized controlled trials of LP versus DCM treatments are feasible, and they underline the need for experimental analyses of the two treatments. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: The reader will be able to: (1) describe the principles and methods of Lidcombe treatment for early stuttering; (2) delineate principles and methods of Demands and Capacities Model treatment; and (3) summarize results of an investigation that compared these programs' relative effects in a pilot study.

I am very curious what will come out. My guess is no big difference between both treatments. Though I am concerned that the statistics and research design like in the Lidcombe trial will be flawed. Another interesting twist would be to have a third non-treatment arm.

2 comments:

MommaWriter said...

I think that would be *more* than an interesting twist. I'd love to see a non-treatment arm, but I guess they must feel that the benefits of treatment have been proven, so it'd be cruel to "withhold" treatment? I was a little disappointed when my son's school enrolled one of my son's classmates in speech therapy for stuttering. His parents hadn't pursued it and I was really interested to see what happened! (Not that a sample size of one is particularly meaningful, of course. It's only interesting anecdotally!)

The ATOM BLOG said...

Thank you for the insight into your treatment. I started Lexapro 9 days ago and noticed a lack of stammering - in fact, I've never felt so fluent. My wife commented on it and I've noticed the differences in people's reactions to me because of my increased fluency.