Severity oropharyngeal dysphagia and oral transit time in stroke

Abstract

The severity scale is a tool used to help the clinical decisions in oropharyngeal dysphagia. However, the presence or absence of penetration laryngeal and tracheal aspiration should not be the only parameter to guide the decisions related to the release oral intake, once the presence of increased oral transit time (OTT) can compromise both the amount of oral intake and increase the time of supply and, consequently, compromising the nutritional aspect. The aim of this paper is to propose and to validate a scale of degree of impairment for oropharyngeal dysphagia in stroke and, additionally, to correlate it with the gold standard scale proposed in the literature for this population. It will be participating in this study approximately 120 patients, post-ischemic stroke, acute or chronic, with neurological diagnosis confirmed by medical tests, clinical or neuroimaging, regardless of age, education and gender, served by three reference centers of São Paulo. All subjects will be submitted to diagnosis process in oropharyngeal dysphagia, including clinical evaluation (Silva, 2004), swallowing videofluoroscopy with quantitative analysis of the OTT. Moreover, the exams will be digitized for the OTT can be analyzed by a specific software (Spadotto el al, 2008) and, hence, a classification of the degree of involvement of oropharyngeal dysphagia could be done. For statistical analysis will be applied tests to validate the proposed scale and the tests of correlation between the proposed scale and gold standard scale. (AU)