Prevalence of speech-language disorders in kindergarten children of public schools and the social indicators/Prevalencia de alteracoes fonoaudiologicas em pre-escolares da rede publica e os determinantes sociais

Purpose: to verify the prevalence of speech, language and orofacialmotricity, and a potential association among these factors with social indicators like, socioeconomic status and parents' education in children aged between 4 to 6 years and 11 months, who are enrolled in kindergarten public schools from Santa Maria--RS. Methods: this research is a cross-sectional prevalence survey, in which 262 children aged between 4 to 6 years and 11 months took part. They were students from public schools. An interview with the guardians and a speech-language assessment (language, phonetics/phonology, articulatory and orofacial praxis, orofacial structures) were performed. The children were classified according to the criteria: family income, mother's and father's education, language, speech and orofacialmotricity. The results had statistical analysis with Fischer Test and significance level fixed on 5%. Results: the most prevalent disorder was orofacial myology disorder (31,30%), followed by speech (21,37%) and language (4,58%) disorders. No association was found between speech-language disorders and social indicators. Conclusion: the analyzed sample showed high prevalence of speech-language disorders. This result indicates the importance of speech pathologists' work in the public schools. Probably, the uniformity of the sample caused no association between speech-language disorders and social indicators, suggesting the necessity of performing other researches with more varied samples. KEYWORDS: Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences; Prevalence; Child; Child, Preschool Objetivo: verificar a prevalencia de alteracoes de fala, linguagem e motricidade orofacial, bem como uma possivel associacao destes fatores com determinantes sociais como, condicao socioeconomica e escolaridade parental em criancas de 4 a 6 anos e 11 meses de idade, matriculadas em escolas municipais de educacao infantil da cidade de Santa Maria--RS. Metodos: a presente pesquisa caracteriza-se como transversal, de prevalencia, em que participaram 262 criancas entre 4 a 6 anos e 11 meses de idade, estudantes de escolas da rede municipal. Realizou-se entrevista com os pais e avaliacao fonoaudiologica (linguagem, fonetica/fonologia, praxias articulatorias e buco-faciais e estruturas orofaciais). Os sujeitos foram agrupados conforme os criterios: renda familiar, escolaridade do pai e da mae, alteracoes de linguagem, fala e motricidade orofacial. Os resultados passaram por analise estatistica com o teste Exat