Is there a decline in speech and swallowing in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis over ten years?
Regiani Alabarces Mendes, Ivonaldo Leidson Barbosa Lima, Mário Emílio Teixeira Dourado Júnior and 1 others
PMID 39936815WHAT IT FOUND
Patients with bulbar ALS lose speech and salivation control significantly faster than those with spinal ALS.
Women showed a higher risk of rapid decline in swallowing, speech, and salivation compared to men.
Key findings
01Individuals with bulbar ALS have a 5.34 times greater risk of losing speech function before those with spinal ALS.
02Patients with bulbar ALS had a 21.45 times higher risk of developing sialorrhea complaints compared to those with spinal ALS.
03Women with ALS exhibit a faster decline in swallowing, speech, and salivation functions compared to men.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study relied on retrospective medical records, which may contain errors or inconsistencies in scale completion. Exclusion of records due to incomplete data or errors may have introduced bias. The study did not include objective instrumental assessments (like videoendoscopy) to confirm functional status, relying solely on ALSFRS-R scores.
Declared interests
Nothing to declare.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that women have significantly faster decline in all functions based on statistical significance alone. While Cox regression showed higher risk ratios for women, the Log-rank tests for speech and salivation differences between sexes were not statistically significant (p=0.567 and p=0.683 respectively).