non-medical treatments of drooling by speech and language pathologists in cerebral palsy children: a systematic review

Background: drooling, commonly observed in cerebral palsy children, negatively impacts different aspects of their lives. there are several treatment options for drooling, with no consensus on a single method as the most effective one. the current systematic review provides an overview of the evidence of the different non-medical intervention methods used by speech and language pathologists to reduce drooling in cerebral palsy children.methods: a comprehensive and systematic search was conducted in the following electronic databases for publications from 2010-22: pubmed, scopus, science direct, web of science, cochrane database of systematic reviews, and google scholar. the national health and medical research council (nhmrc)and the physiotherapy evidence database (pedro-p) scale were respectively used to determine the level of evidence and the methodological quality of articles.results: out of 2740 articles identified, 15 records met the inclusion criteria and were included in the study. the studies considered in this systematic review differed in the following criteria: design, participant characteristics, types of assessments and treatments, and follow-up periods. non-medical interventions for drooling were found to be effective in alleviating the severity and decreasing the frequency of drooling.conclusion: the results showed the effectiveness of nonmedical interventions for drooling in cerebral palsy children. the treatments provided by slps can be classified into three categories: oromotor and sensory interventions, behavioral interventions, and the use of kinesio-tape. among these, the use of oromotor interventions and oral sensory interventions, alone or combined with other approaches, was the most widely used method.