Effects of electrical stimulation combined with dysphagia therapy in elderly individual with oropharyngeal dysphagia: a case study.
Doo-Ho Lee, Ji-Su Park, Seung-Woong Lee and 1 others
PMID 28356653WHAT IT FOUND
In a 72-year-old man with age-related swallowing difficulty, thermal-tactile stimulation, orofacial exercise, and electrical stimulation were followed by improved tongue and lip strength and decreased swallowing scale scores.
The treatments were given together, so no single component can be credited.
Key findings
01Tongue strength improved from 35 kPa to 39 kPa, and lip strength improved from 18 kPa to 23 kPa.
02Videofluoroscopic dysphagia scale scores decreased from 14 to 8 in the oral phase and from 19 to 8.5 in the pharyngeal phase, and the penetration-aspiration score decreased from 4 to 2.
03Thermal-tactile stimulation and orofacial exercise were performed during electrical stimulation for 30 minutes per day, 5 days per week, for 4 weeks.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
A 72-year-old man was the only participant, so the findings describe what happened to him, not what would happen to other patients. He had no stroke, neurological disorder, or cognitive problems, so the report does not address swallowing difficulty from those causes. Thermal-tactile stimulation, orofacial exercise, and electrical stimulation were given together, so the paper cannot separate the contribution of any single component. There was no comparison group, so the before-after changes cannot be compared with another group. The supplied text reports only the 4-week treatment period and does not say whether the changes lasted.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that electrical stimulation caused the improvement. The patient also received thermal-tactile stimulation and orofacial exercise at the same time, and this was a single case, not a pattern.