A Study to Compare the Effects of Palatal Stimulation and Swallowing Exercises Among Stroke Patients with Dysphagia

Abstract

Background: To evaluate the combined effect of palatal stimulation with swallowing exercises in patients with dysphagia following stroke along with conventional exercises. There are many positive results regarding treatment effects of dysphagia has been published, still lots of unanswered questions emerge regarding the physiotherapy management for dysphagia, there are no studies which highlighted the prognosis of the patients with dysphagia from moderate/severe category to mild and normal based on the GUSS score. Methods: The patients who were referred for palatal stimulation by the Neuro physician were considered for experimental group and the other group of patients with dysphagia were taken as control group. Each patient in the experimental group received palatal stimulation with faradic current, 90 contractions was encouraged followed by session of swallowing exercises for 30 min, for 6 days per week for 2 weeks whereas the patient in the control group received sham stimulation, followed by conventional rehabilitation treatment, on the same time schedule. Results: Data was compared within the groups by wilcoxon test and proved to be highly significant in the experimental group and significant in the control group. The post-test mean value for experimental value and control group was 11.71 and 7.38 respectively. Thus, proving that experimental group showed significant change in the GUSS score than the control group. Conclusion: The results of this study suggests that stroke patients with dysphagia benefit significantly with combined method of palatal stimulation and swallowing exercises. This method had considerably improved the GUSS scores on patients with dysphagia.