Hope Is In The Science

Rehabilitation in dysphagia management focuses on diet modification and swallowing exercises. Notably, Langmore and Pisegna (2015) reported that deglutition research does not support many of the swallowing strategies or exercises that are commonly implemented, possibly because they might not sufficiently incorporate the principles of neuroplasticity. Two important principles of neuroplasticity are use-it-or-lose-it and use-it-or-improve-it. These principles might manifest if patients with swallowing impairments are not discouraged to eat, despite having significant dysphagia. 

This course follows the same patient who was highlighted in the course entitled “Distinguishing normal, functional, and dysfunctional swallowing in your  clinical evaluations” across several months to test how and whether swallowing is the best treatment for swallowing in addition to non-swallowing treatment tactics (i.e. Expiratory Muscle Strength Training or EMST). In this course we also explore the possibility of tracking subjective outcomes that have clinical relevance and are important to patient quality of life (i.e. pneumonia occurrences, saliva management) alongside more objective outcomes about swallowing mechanics (i.e. UES opening and swallow response time). This course also includes an interesting case of treating a patient with a normal-to-functional swallowing ability. This course includes the live audio from the in-person version of this course from April 28 and 29, 2018 in Gainesville Florida. The attendees’ perspectives demonstrate the importance of reconsidering whether outdated treatment principles should be used while encouraging more frequent discussions among SLPs to support learning in both formal and informal settings.