The Test of Mastication and Swallowing Solids and the Timed Water Swallow Test: Reliability, associations, age and gender effects, and normative data.
Oshrat Sella-Weiss
PMID 36036753WHAT IT FOUND
Healthy adults who took longer to drink 150 ml of water also took longer to eat a cracker, and those who used more swallows on one test used more on the other.
These tests provide age and gender norms, not proof of a swallowing disorder.
Key findings
01Among 290 healthy adults, longer water-drinking time was significantly associated with longer cracker-eating time, and more water swallows were associated with more cracker swallows.
02Within-session test-retest consistency was good to excellent for the water test and moderate to good for the cracker test.
03Older age was associated with slower chewing and drinking and lower swallowing capacity, and women generally needed more swallows and more time than 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 participants were healthy adults without known dysphagia, so these values are not patient diagnostic cutoffs. The cracker was one Israeli brand, and TOMASS norms are cracker-specific, so values may not apply to other crackers. Data were collected and analysed by third-year students under supervision, not by experienced clinicians alone. Some participants could not complete the tests: two older participants stopped the water test and six did not complete the cracker test. The number analysed varied by measure because some data were missing. The study is cross-sectional in healthy adults, so it cannot show that slower chewing or drinking causes dysphagia, malnutrition, or decline. No instrumental assessment was used to confirm swallowing safety or bolus aggregation.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflict of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use these results as evidence that either test diagnoses dysphagia or that a treatment improves swallowing. The study measured healthy adults without known dysphagia, and the associations between the tests do not show that one test causes the other.