2020 Volume 24 Issue 3 Pages 240-246
Purpose: The Seirei dysphagia screening questionnaire has 15 questions and three choices of: severe symptoms (A), mild symptoms (B), and no symptoms (C). The conventional assessment method of “a response of at least one severe symptom A suggests the presence of dysphagia” has high sensitivity and specificity. In this study, a new method for scoring and evaluating the answer choices was devised and compared with the conventional evaluation methods. In addition, this method was applied to healthy subjects to obtain basic data for the development of a screening tool for the condition of impaired swallowing function.
Methods: We used survey data from 50 patients with cerebrovascular disease who had dysphagia but were able to swallow orally, 145 patients with cerebrovascular disease who did not have dysphagia, and 170 healthy subjects. All those data were obtained during the development of the Seirei dysphagia screening questionnaire. The sensitivity and specificity of the cutoff values were calculated for each of the alternatives, A: 2 points, B: 1 point, C: 0 point, and A: 4 points, B: 1 point, C: 0 point. In addition, the data from 170 healthy subjects were analyzed for the total scores for each age group.
Results: The results of ROC analysis showed that the evaluation method with a score of A: 4 points and a cutoff value of 8 points was the most suitable. The sensitivity and specificity of this method were 90.0% and 89.8%, respectively, which were comparable to the sensitivity and specificity of the conventional method of 92.0% and 90.1%, respectively. A clear difference in scores was found between those under 75 years and those over 75 years when comparing the age groups in healthy subjects.
Conclusions: The sensitivity and specificity of the Seirei dysphagia screening questionnaire by scoring were almost the same as those of the conventional assessment method in which the presence of dysphagia was suspected if at least one answer in A was given. In the general elderly population, scores were found to be significantly higher after 75 years of age, providing basic data for the development of screening tools to assess impaired swallowing function.
