The effects of feeding therapy for the patients with swallowing dysfunction in our hospital

Abstract

The aging rate of our country tends to increase every year and exceeds 26% at present. Aspiration pneumonia due to the decline of swallowing function is frequently seen in the elderly. There is a need for feeding therapy in such patients. Kinan Hospital is located in the southernmost tip in Mie prefecture and has a very high aging rate with 37.4% in the local residents. The average age of the internal medicine hospitalized patients is 81 years old. There is a high incidence of aspiration pneumonia. This time, we focused our efforts on team approach involving various professionals to improve the quality of medical care.

Doctors, speech therapists, nurses, dentists and dental hygienists cooperated and intervened in feeding therapy. Feeding therapy is requested to rehabilitation department from the attending doctor or the support nurse. The rehabilitation department estimates swallowing conditions using VE (Videoendoscopic examination) and/or VF (Videofluoroscopic examination). A treatment plan was added to each patient charts；Where oral food intake is possible, ward nurse will take charge of the swallowing therapy with a dentist conducting mouth function training once a week to either patient or ward nurse to propel betterment, for example.

Focusing on the inter-professional understanding and sharing various skills and techniques has transformed hospital care on the whole. As a result, there was a prominent decrease in the frequency of aspiration troubles and improvement was also seen in hospital management.