First Steps Towards Development of an Instrument for the Reproducible Quantification of Oropharyngeal Swallow Physiology in Bottle-Fed Children

AbstractThe incidence of feeding/swallowing impairments (deglutition disorders) in young children is rising and poses serious acute and long-term health consequences. Accurate detection and prompt intervention can lessen the impact of dysphagia-induced sequelae. Videofluoroscopic Swallow Studies (VFSSs) are used to make critical decisions for medically fragile children despite procedural variability and the lack of agreed upon measures for interpreting and reporting results. This investigation represents the first steps in the development of a novel tool for the quantification of oropharyngeal swallow physiology from full-length VFSS examinations in bottle-fed children. TheModified Barium Swallow Impairment Profile MBSImP ™© served as the conceptual assessment model for development of components and operational score variants to characterize distinguishable VFSS observations. Twenty-four components of swallowing physiology were validated via expert consensus. Training materials included a library of 94 digitized v ideo images comprised of distinct score variants for each component. Materials were disseminated to seven speech-language pathologists (SLPs) who participated in didactic and self-training sessions, and rated components. All SLPs achieved ≥80% reliability criterion after completing two or three tr aining sessions. Agreement for 17 (71%) components was achieved after two sessions. Nutritive sucking/oral and airway-related components were most difficult to distin...
Source: Dysphagia - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research