Oropharyngeal Deglutition Characterization in Multiple Sclerosis

Introduction: Multiple sclerosis is a disease with neurogenic disease progression distinct authors reported the presence of oropharyngeal dysphagia, which usually involve the oral phase, pharyngeal, and esophageal phases of swallowing.

Objective: To characterize the oropharyngeal swallowing in multiple sclerosis.

Method: We analyzed six adult female subjects with neurological diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, age range 30 to 55 years. Retrospective study, analyzing the protocols of clinical examination of swallowing (Silva , 2004), objective assessment by videofluoroscopy or nasoendoscopy swallowing. Applied to scale the degree of impairment of oropharyngeal dysphagia proposed by Ott et al, 1996 uses as criteria the presence of laryngeal penetration and/or laryngotracheal aspiration to define mild, moderate, or severe . And the Functional Oral Intake Scale—FOIS (Crary et al, 2005).

Results: Four subjects had moderate dysphagia and two mild, with the most frequent signal the presence of pharyngeal residue accompanied by multiple swallows. As for FOIS, three individuals were in the 7:02 level at level 5, and this was what had the greatest time of onset of the disease.

Conclusion: There were changes in the biomechanics of swallowing in multiple sclerosis, and the degree of impairment from mild to moderate pulmonary suggests low impact. Regarding the level of oral intake, we suggest future research correlating the time of onset of the disease with nutritional status. Such information can contribute to the definition of specific management programs for this population.