Bulletin

Issue: January/February 2006

Awards

Prize-winning cancer research

Research from three La Trobe University speech pathology students recently swept the board at the Australia and New Zealand Head and Neck Cancer Society meeting in Sydney.

Ruth White, Honours student in the School of Human Communication Sciences, won the scientific paper prize of $500 for her presentation of ‘Reliability and validity of tongue pressures as a measure of swallowing in people with Head and Neck cancer’.

Jessica Bibby, Honours student, presented the results of the first large cohort study to examine ‘Voice outcomes after radiotherapy treatment for early laryngeal cancer patients in Victoria’.

Professor Alison Perry, Chair in Human Communication Sciences at La Trobe, says this study has laid the benchmark for measurement of voice outcomes in patients with larynx cancer.

Jacqui Frowen, PhD student, presented a systematic review of the literature examining swallowing outcomes after radiotherapy for Head and Neck cancer, demonstrating the lack of data for treatment outcome of this important variable.

She then described her own x-ray study, which uses videofluoroscopy at the baseline treatment (pre-cancer) stage and again at six months after treatment, to objectively document changes in swallowing impairment.

The research projects result from a collaboration between Professor Perry and Dr June Corry, Radiation Oncologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne.

Professor Perry says the collaboration enables quality clinical research and joint academic-clinical teaching for La Trobe communication sciences students.

Senior clinical speech pathologist at the Peter MacCallum Centre, Ms Louise Dobbie, is employed via La Trobe to facilitate the University’s on-site clinical research at the Centre.