Solid Medication Intake in Hospitalised Patients With Dysphagia: A Challenge for Speech and Language Pathologists?
Michaela Trapl-Grundschober, Lea Schneider, Steffen Schulz and 4 others
PMID 40605450WHAT IT FOUND
Most surveyed speech-language pathologists assess solid medications during dysphagia evaluations, but methods vary widely: many use patients' own medications in clinical exams and placebos in instrumental exams, and many recommend crushing or pausing medications without standardised guidance.
Key findings
01Of 147 analysed speech-language pathologists, 108 assessed solid medications; 71 did this routinely and 37 only in exceptional cases.
02Among the 108 who assessed solid medications, 69 used patients' own medications during clinical exams and 26 during instrumental exams; 87 used placebos during instrumental exams and 35 during clinical exams.
03Of those 108, 100 recommended whether solid medications should be modified; even among the 39 who did not assess solid medications, 29 recommended an administration method.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Responses were self-reported and may not match actual practice. Convenience sampling through social media and emails did not reach all stroke units or all speech-language pathologists in German-speaking countries. Of 200 responses, 53 were excluded, including those with more than half unanswered questions, so the analysed sample was 147. Many respondents work across several wards, so stroke-unit-specific methods could not be fully separated. The questionnaire did not distinguish whether pathomechanisms influenced decisions during clinical exams or instrumental assessments. It did not measure how often speech-language pathologists interact with pharmacists, physicians or nurses about medication changes. Pre-coded multiple-choice and Likert responses may not have captured nuanced practice.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The work was funded by Karl Landsteiner Privatuniversität für Gesundheitswissenschaften.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these results as proof that any solid-medication method is safe or effective. They describe what speech-language pathologists reported doing, not outcomes tested in patients.