Background: Dysphagia is potentially life‐threatening and highly prevalent in people with severe/profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (SPIMD). The “Signaleringslijst Verslikken” (SV) is a frequently used Dutch screening tool to detect dysphagia. The aim was to examine the convergent validity of the SV for people with SPIMD. Method: Direct support staff completed the SV, with speech and language therapists scoring a validated tool, the Dysphagia Disorders Survey (DDS), for 41 persons with SPIMD, aged ≥50 years. The results were compared for agreement using the McNemar's Test. Results: The proportion of agreement was 0.59 (95% CI 0.43–0.72). The SV did not detect dysphagia in 17 participants (44%) who were assessed as having dysphagia according to the DDS. The difference in proportion of detection of dysphagia between the two methods was significant (p < 0.0001). Conclusions: The results suggest that the convergent validity of the SV is insufficient: the SV is not sensitive for detecting dysphagia in people with SPIMD.
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OBJECTIVE: The objective was to assess swallowing, mouth opening and speech function during the first year after radiation-based treatment (RT(+)) after introduction of a dedicated preventive rehabilitation program for stage III-IV oropharyngeal carcinoma (OPC).METHODS: Swallowing, mouth opening and speech function were collected before and at six- and twelve-month follow-up after RT(+) for OPC as part of ongoing prospective assessments by speech-language pathologists .RESULTS: Objective and patient-perceived function deteriorated until 6 months and improved until 12 months after treatment, but did not return to baseline levels with 25%, 20% and 58% of the patients with objective dysphagia, trismus and speech problems, respectively. Feeding tube dependency and pneumonia prevalence was low.CONCLUSION: Despite successful implementation, a substantial proportion of patients still experience functional limitations after RT(+) for OPC, suggesting room for improvement of the current rehabilitation program. Pretreatment sarcopenia seems associated with worse functional outcomes and might be a relevant new target for rehabilitation strategies.
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BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Radiotherapy of the head and neck is challenged by the relatively large number of organs-at-risk close to the tumor. Biologically-oriented objective functions (OF) could optimally distribute the dose among the organs-at-risk. We aimed to explore OFs based on multivariable normal tissue complication probability (NTCP) models for grade 2-4 dysphagia (DYS) and tube feeding dependence (TFD).MATERIALS AND METHODS: One hundred head and neck cancer patients were studied. Additional to the clinical plan, two more plans (an OFDYS and OFTFD-plan) were optimized per patient. The NTCP models included up to four dose-volume parameters and other non-dosimetric factors. A fully automatic plan optimization framework was used to optimize the OFNTCP-based plans.RESULTS: All OFNTCP-based plans were reviewed and classified as clinically acceptable. On average, the Δdose and ΔNTCP were small comparing the OFDYS-plan, OFTFD-plan, and clinical plan. For 5% of patients NTCPTFD reduced >5% using OFTFD-based planning compared to the OFDYS-plans.CONCLUSIONS: Plan optimization using NTCPDYS- and NTCPTFD-based objective functions resulted in clinically acceptable plans. For patients with considerable risk factors of TFD, the OFTFD steered the optimizer to dose distributions which directly led to slightly lower predicted NTCPTFD values as compared to the other studied plans.
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