Oropharyngeal dysphagia (OD) is a highly prevalent and growing condition in the older population. Although OD may cause very severe complications, it is often not detected, explored, and treated. Older patients are frequently unaware of their swallowing dysfunction which is one of the reasons why the consequences of OD, ie, aspiration, dehydration, and malnutrition, are regularly not attributed to dysphagia. Older patients are particularly vulnerable to dysphagia because multiple age-related changes increase the risk of dysphagia. Physicians in charge of older patients should be aware that malnutrition, dehydration, and pneumonia are frequently caused by (unrecognized) dysphagia. The diagnosis is particularly difficult in the case of silent aspiration. In addition to numerous screening tools, videofluoroscopy was the traditional gold standard of diagnosing OD. Recently, the fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing is increasingly utilized because it has several advantages. Besides making a diagnosis, fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing is applied to evaluate the effectiveness of therapeutic maneuvers and texture modification of food and liquids. In addition to swallowing training and nutritional interventions, newer rehabilitation approaches of stimulation techniques are showing promise and may significantly impact future treatment strategies.

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Penetration-aspiration is known as the main finding in deglutition-disordered patients with implications for diagnostics and therapeutic management. Reliable detection of penetration-aspiration is given with fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES(®)) as one of the gold standards in instrumental swallowing evaluation. The advice to implement video recording in FEES(®) to assure quality in identifying penetration-aspiration is often ignored, especially in bed-side settings. Thus, the aim of this study was to compare reliability and validity in detecting penetration-aspiration events with and without video recording. Eighty FEES(®) sequences, ten per severity grade of the Penetration-Aspiration Scale by Rosenbek et al., were rated by four blinded ENTs with two different methods. The first method simulated the evaluation without video recording (Method A), and the second one with video recording (Method B). Rating was performed twice per setting with 2 weeks in between and every time newly randomized. Intra- and inter-rater reliability as well as validity were analyzed for both evaluation methods. R-to-Z transformation was used to reveal the more reliable method and ordinal regression to determine potential rating influences. Method B demonstrated higher intra- and inter-rater reliability values than Method A and was revealed as more reliable in identifying penetration-aspiration according to r-to-Z transformation (Z = -2.92, p = .004). Ordinal regression detected a significant influence of the evaluation method choice on the rating results (p = .016). As Method B turned out to be more reliable than Method A in detecting penetration-aspiration, the presented study recommends the implementation of video recording in swallowing diagnostics.

A properly performed fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES®) is comprehensive and time-consuming. Editing times of FEES protocols and attempts for efficiency maximization are unknown. Here, the protocol editing times of completed FEES examinations were determined. The present study reports the time savings and quality gains of a newly developed documentation system tailored to the FEES standard of Langmore. Four independent examiners analyzed twelve videos of FEES procedures, six without and six with the documentation system. Effectiveness of the documentation system was evaluated according to the times for total evaluation, interpretation, documentation, report writing, and for report completeness. The documentation system reduced editing times and increased report completeness with large effect sizes. Averaged total evaluation time decreased from 42 to 27 min, report completeness increased from 55 to 80%. The use of the documentation system facilitates and improves the assessment of the swallowing process.