Grants: CAPES/ CNPq.Conflict of interest: non-existent allows the speech therapist to identify: the difficulties the patient displays in the swallowing process, signs of laryngeal penetration and/or laringo-tracheal aspiration of the food swallowed, security in the maintenance or reintroduction of food orally, the best consistency to be used and the possible causes of the alterations identifiedDuring clinical assessment, it is observed the efficiency of the food bolus capture and preparation, the number of swallows, laryngeal elevation, the presence of coughing, choking or other suggestive signs of laryngeal penetration or laryngo-tracheal aspiration, oral escape of the food and nasal regurgitation, length of feeding, the presence of food residues in the oral cavity and changes in vocal quality after deglutition, as well as the need of using postural and/or facilitator maneuvers. To help in this process, most of speech therapists adopt instrumental resources such as the pulse oximetry and cervical auscultation [1][2][3][4] .
ABSTRACTIn order to assist on the functional assessment of swallowing, most speech therapists make use of instrumental resources such as cervical auscultation. Thus, the objective of this study was to search the literature in order to find the contribution of cervical auscultation for assessing dysphagias. To this end, international and national journals were reviewed. These journals were indexed in Springer, Lilacs, Bireme, Medline and Scielo databases, comprising the period between 1992 and 2011. From the analysis of the studies, it was possible to verify that: cervical auscultation has been modernized with the technologic evolution, enabling the realization of quantitative studies of the swallowing sounds; there are still few clear evidence of the connections between the sound components of swallowing and the physiological events of the pharyngeal phase; no differences were observed between the swallowing sounds in children and adults; in some studies, cervical auscultation was positively correlated with the videofluoroscopic assessment of swallowing, and others presented positive correlation between these two assessment procedures. Hence, considering that the swallowing videofluoroscopy examination is still difficult to access, with relatively high cost, it is believed that cervical auscultation constitutes an important resource for the diagnosis and clinical monitoring in cases of oropharyngeal dysphagia.