MEDICINE&SCIENCE
More at
Swallowing disorders can make it hard for people to ingest sufficient nutrition and can lead to life-threatening conditions such as aspiration pneumonia, a serious type of lung infection. About 60,000 people die each year because of complications from problems swallowing.
Doctors said that technology to treat swallowing disorders is steadily improving and has the potential to help doctors better treat patients. For instance, devices called expiratory muscle strength trainers help exercise key muscles used in swallowing, said Dr. Luis F. Riquelme, chair of the American Board of Swallowing and Swallowing Disorders.
Another device, an accelerometer sensor, measures how a patients’ muscles move when swallowing. This can help a doctor determine what kind of physical therapy will best benefit the patient.
Even technology as common as an iPad helps doctors because it can be used to show patients 3-D images of swallowing disorders, so they better understand what is going on with their bodies, said Riquelme.
“When you tell a patient they’re aspirating, they don’t really understand until you show it to them,” Riquelme said.
Lorien, where one out of three patients has a swallowing problem, uses a computer system called Synchrony that includes several games that test different swallowing functions. Synchrony was created by the Nevada company Accelerated Care Plus Corp., which specializes in rehabilitation technology.
One of the Synchrony games, called “Divers,” tests isometric and oral motor skills by requiring the patient to swallow in order to move an animated diver up or down to collect pearls from clams that are distributed across the computer screen.
The Synchrony system also comes with a second component called a stimulator. With this device, electrodes are placed on the cheek to stimulate nerves that connect to the brain stem, which controls swallowing. Patients then play the video games in hopes that the stimulated nerves will improve results.
Another game, “Bow & Arrow,” works on swallowing time and coordination. The patient must swallow hard enough to draw back a bow. Then the patient has to time the swallow to release the arrow to shoot down balloons at the top of the screen.
The data from each patient’s gaming session is stored for a starting point the next time.
Tennakoon said the virtual therapy helps therapists better determine how patients perform their exercises.
“With traditional therapy, we said, ‘Swallow really, really hard,’ but we couldn’t really measure how much effort the patient was using,” Tennakoon said. “Now I can look on the screen and see how hard they swallowed.”
Tennakoon said she thinks the technology has made a huge difference in the treatment of some patients.
“When you have tried everything for a patient and you can’t do anything more, this works,” she said.