Ana Dembitz
She graduated in speech therapy from the Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences (formerly the Faculty of Defectology) at the University of Zagreb in 1979. After graduation, she joined the research team on a sociolinguistic project led by the SUVAG Center. In 1981, she began her permanent position at the Phoniatric Center of the ENT Clinic at the University Hospital Centre Zagreb, where she worked on diagnosing and treating speech, language, and voice disorders in children and adolescents. In 1988, she earned her master’s degree from the University of Zagreb School of Medicine with a thesis on the mechanism of vocal nodules in children, under the mentorship of Prof. Dr. Sante Večerina Volić.
Qualifications
Her key areas of interest include childhood hoarseness, early communication, and early intervention for children with cleft palate and/or lip. In 1996, she was part of the first team for cochlear implant surgery in Croatia, working on diagnosis, cochlear adjustment, and patient rehabilitation post-implantation. She works on evaluating communication, speech, and language abilities, using standardized tests to assess language comprehension, expression, vocabulary, phonological awareness, fluency, and other communication skills, including reading, writing, and both verbal and working memory.
Experience
Her professional development has been focused on early diagnosis and rehabilitation of communication and language disorders. Upon joining the Phoniatric Center, she began collaborating with Prof. Dr. Marija Bagatin in early intervention for children with orofacial anomalies, forming the first interdisciplinary team in the former Yugoslavia and one of the first in Europe for the treatment of these malformations. After Prof. Bagatin’s passing, she continued the collaboration with Prof. Dr. Predrag Knežević, which continues to this day. Since June 2021, she has been retired from the University Hospital Centre Zagreb but remains active at Polyclinic Sabol, where she has been a consultant since its founding over thirty years ago.
Membership
She has been involved in teaching speech therapy students in phonetics courses and has contributed to postgraduate education in otorhinolaryngology and clinical pediatrics. She has actively participated in numerous national and international conferences. She is a member of several professional associations, including the Croatian Speech Therapy Association, where she was the first president, as well as various organizations dedicated to early language development, dyslexia, neurofibromatosis, and orofacial clefts.