Abstract
Cognitive function has various effects on the preparatory stage of the swallow. When cognitive disorders are caused due to brain damages, the preparatory stage is also ruined. The damaged preparatory stage disturbs three stages of the swallow-oral, pharyngeal and esophageal stages. Therefore cognitive disorders may cause or aggravate dysphagia. They may also reject to apply some techniques of swallowing therapy.
The dysphagic patients with cognitive disorders must be treated with appropriate techniques in “tailor made” surroundings. They have to be closely supervised and sometimes assisted. To manage the dysphagic patients with cognitive disorders, we should evaluate and treat precisely both their dysphagia and cognitive disorders.
We, speech-language-hearing therapists have been involved cognitive rehabilitation for long years. We are also intensively educated for anatomy, physiology and pathology of oropharynx and larynx.
It is inevitable that many speech-language-hearing therapists come to grips with dysphagia rehabilitation. Swallowing therapy is a rather new part of speech-language pathology. It is neither derivative nor additional duty of us. We need to integrate and develop our knowledge and therapy techniques for cognitive dysfunction and motor speech disorders.
