[Validation of the German version of Eating Assessment Tool for head and neck cancer patients].

Objective: The assessment of subjective swallowing complaints constitutes an important element in a multidimensional, modern management of head and neck cancer patients suffering from dysphagia. For this purpose, an internationally recognized and validated 10-item questionnaire EAT-10 is used that was developed and validated by Belafski et al. in 2008.

Validation of the secretion severity rating scale.

Accumulation of secretions within the hypopharynx, aditus laryngis, and trachea is one characteristic of severe dysphagia and is of high clinical and therapeutic relevance. For the graduation of the secretion severity level, a secretion scale was provided by Murray et al. in 1996.

Oropharyngeal dysphagia in older persons - from pathophysiology to adequate intervention: a review and summary of an international expert meeting.

Oropharyngeal dysphagia (OD) is a highly prevalent and growing condition in the older population. Although OD may cause very severe complications, it is often not detected, explored, and treated. Older patients are frequently unaware of their swallowing dysfunction which is one of the reasons why the consequences of OD, ie, aspiration, dehydration, and malnutrition, are regularly not attributed to dysphagia.

Penetration-Aspiration: Is Their Detection in FEES ® Reliable Without Video Recording?

Penetration-aspiration is known as the main finding in deglutition-disordered patients with implications for diagnostics and therapeutic management. Reliable detection of penetration-aspiration is given with fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES(®)) as one of the gold standards in instrumental swallowing evaluation. The advice to implement video recording in FEES(®) to assure quality in identifying penetration-aspiration is often ignored, especially in bed-side settings.

A documentation system to save time and ensure proper application of the fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES®).

A properly performed fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES(®)) is comprehensive and time-consuming. Editing times of FEES protocols and attempts for efficiency maximization are unknown. Here, the protocol editing times of completed FEES examinations were determined.

Computer-assisted documentation of the fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing.

Background: Because documentation and report writing in fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES) is time consuming and susceptible to omissions, a software solution to ameliorate these problems by maintaining document quality is desirable.

Material/methods: Based on the FEES procedure of Langmore, a documentation software (DS) which presents a digitized FEES recording and masks with precast text fields was designed to facilitate and unify data input. The oropharyngeal secretion scale of Murray and the penetration-aspiration scale of Rosenbek were integrated to increase comparability of dysphagia information.