Reliability and validity of cervical auscultation.

We conducted a two-part study that contributes to the discussion about cervical auscultation (CA) as a scientifically justifiable and medically useful tool to identify patients with a high risk of aspiration/penetration. We sought to determine (1) acoustic features that mark a deglutition act as dysphagic; (2) acoustic changes in healthy older deglutition profiles compared with those of younger adults; (3) the correctness and concordance of rater judgments based on CA; and (4) if education in CA improves individual reliability. The first part of the study focused on a comparison of the "swallow morphology" of dysphagic as opposed to healthy subjects' deglutition in terms of structure properties of the pharyngeal phase of deglutition.