Abstract
Dysphagia rehabilitation is considered desirable to start from the acute treatment of cause. There are a lot of swallowing tests for the elderly, but little for the acute patients. ICU patients are different from general in terms of consciousness and general status. ICU patients experience frequently changes in their ability to swallow before and after admitting.
This study aimed to create and evaluate a standardized swallowing screening test for ICU patients. Our screening test is to be composed of a 6 fields' checklist consisted of 13 questions and modified water swallowing test;MWST. To examining specificity and sensitivity, we evaluated 109 ICU patients by the screening test.
Then, the gold standard is as the symptom of aspiration and/or aspiration pneumonitis after 72 hours of the first oral intake or as the re-evaluation of swallowing by the speech therapist. In the results, the sensitivity was 0.667 and specificity was 0.934. And, false-positive patients were under longer intubation period than true-negative ones. Intubation is considered to effect on the specificity of our screening test.
