Technology helps cure swallowing disorders

Video games support recovery from effects of neurological problems

Cecile Buker peered at the computer screen as a therapist prepared to feed her a teaspoon of water from a clear plastic cup. An animated kangaroo on the screen hopped toward a gold coin suspended in the air.

“Get ready to swallow now,” said the speech therapist Inoka Tennakoon. “A nice strong swallow.”

Buker took a gulp and the kangaroo jumped, capturing the coin.

For more than a year now, therapists at the Lorien Health skilled-nursing facility in Columbia have been using virtual reality technology and video games to help treat people with swallowing disorders.

They say the video games being used at the 205-bed facility keep people engaged in their treatment. Therapists have also seen patients recover more quickly because they get instant feedback on how they’re doing. If they don’t swallow enough, they don’t succeed at the game.

Buker, 60, suffered a stroke at her Frederick home in April and could not swallow any solid or liquid foods when she first arrived at Lorien for therapy. She had to use breathing and feeding tubes. With therapy, including the video games, she slowly recovered and learned to swallow again.

On this day, Buker was practicing typical swallowing. On other days, she and other patients might perform exercises such as sucking through a straw, lip pressing, effortful swallowing and jaw grading — learning to judge how wide to open their mouths. Sensors placed on Buker’s neck feed data on her swallowing technique to a computer. Typically, the patient does the exercise in sets of 25 repetitions, Tennakoon said.

Buker said the games don’t fool her into thinking she’s not getting therapy. But they help ease the monotony and boredom, and the games do help, she said.

“It gives me something to do,” said Buker, who speaks in a whisper because of lingering effects from the stroke.

Conservative estimates are that nearly one in 25 U.S. adults will experience a swallowing problem each year, though it is more common in older people, according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

Swallowing problems are often the result of neurological conditions such as stroke, traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy or Parkinson’s disease. Either the muscles are damaged because of the illness or they become weakened because patients are on ventilators and feeding tubes for long periods of time.