BACKGROUND: congenital hypothyroidism is a metabolic disturbance that causes severe consequence for non-treated individuals and even the children thataccomplish the treatment can present development disturbances. The National Neonatal Screening Program, instituted by Health Ministry, foresees the individuals' longitudinal attendance with multidisciplinary team. However, the Speech and Language Pathologist is not included in this team. This way, considering the occurrence of communication disturbances in these individuals, a bibliographical assessment was carried out in Lilacs, MedLine and PubMed databases, in the period from 1987 to 2007, regarding the disturbances in development abilities arising from congenital hypothyroidism. PURPOSE: to check, in the scientific literature, for the presence of development alterations in individuals with congenital hypothyroidism and contemplate the importance of the speech and language pathologist performance, together with a multidisciplinary team specialized in their attendance. CONCLUSION: the literature reports disturbances in development abilities (motor, cognitive, linguistics and self-care) and stresses out that children with congenital hypothyroidism are under risk for disturbances in the linguistic development and, therefore, they need the longitudinal attendance of the communicative development. The importance of the speech and language pathologist performance in credential Neonatal Screening Programs by the Health Ministry becomes evident. It still fits to emphasize the need for investigations regarding the other metabolic alterations meditated in these programs, in which the speech and language pathologist can act in such a way to prevent, enable and rehabilitate the communication disturbances, contributing to the work in team, promoting health in this population.
Congenital Hypothyroidism; Child Development; Language Development
