The Lidcombe Program via webcam: a case study - Abstract
The Lidcombe Program is a treatment for early stuttering. It has been thoroughly investigated in its standard, clinic format. An Australian randomized controlled trial that compared the clinical and a webcam format of the Lidcombe Program resulted in similar outcome. The webcam format of the Lidcombe Program is to our knowledge not yet investigated in other trials. With this case study we wanted to assess the viability of the Lidcombe Program via webcam outside of Australia, in our Belgian context.
F. was a 3-year-and-4-month-old boy who stuttered for four months at the time of treatment commencement. The intake session was a physical session. The treatment sessions were delivered via webcam. Severity ratings after 9 and 18 months were the primary outcome; number of treatment sessions and number of weeks to complete Stage 1 were the secondary outcome.
F. started with a mean severity rating of 2.6 pretreatment. The stuttering decreased to 0.6 at 9 months after treatment and 0 at 18 months after treatment. He needed 33 weeks to complete Stage 1. The number of sessions to complete Stage 1 was 18. The primary outcome was below the mean results from the webcam group of the trial of Bridgman et al. The number of weeks was above the median number of weeks of the Bridgman et al. trial, but the number of treatment sessions was lower. This is because after three webcam sessions with a weekly interval, sessions were planned with a fortnightly interval.