Swallowing speed is no adequate predictor of aspiration in Parkinson's disease

TY - JOUR

T1 - Swallowing speed is no adequate predictor of aspiration in Parkinson's disease

AU - Pflug, Christina

AU - Niessen, Almut

AU - Buhmann, Carsten

AU - Bihler, Moritz

N1 - © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

PY - 2019/12

Y1 - 2019/12

N2 - BACKGROUND: There is still a lack of a clinical test to reliably identify patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) being at risk for aspiration.METHODS: In this prospective, controlled, cross-sectional study, we assessed if swallowing speed for water is a useful clinical test to predict aspiration proven by flexible endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES). Due to this, we measured the swallowing speed for 90 mL water in 115 consecutive and unselected PD outpatients of all clinical stages and 32 healthy controls.KEY RESULTS: Average swallowing speed was lower in patients compared with controls (6.5 ± 3.9 mL/s vs 8.5 ± 3.2 mL/s; P < .01). The disease-independent widely used threshold of <10 mL/s showed insufficient sensitivity of 88% and specificity of 19% with high false-positive rates of 63% for patients and 69% for controls. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was carried out to define a suitable cutoff value for detection of aspiration of water (area under the curve 0.72, P < .001) in PD patients. The optimized cutoff value was 5.5 mL/s with a sensitivity of 69% and a specificity of 64%.CONCLUSION AND INFERENCES: Measuring swallowing speed is prone to methodological errors and not suitable as a screening instrument to predict aspiration in PD patients.

AB - BACKGROUND: There is still a lack of a clinical test to reliably identify patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) being at risk for aspiration.METHODS: In this prospective, controlled, cross-sectional study, we assessed if swallowing speed for water is a useful clinical test to predict aspiration proven by flexible endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES). Due to this, we measured the swallowing speed for 90 mL water in 115 consecutive and unselected PD outpatients of all clinical stages and 32 healthy controls.KEY RESULTS: Average swallowing speed was lower in patients compared with controls (6.5 ± 3.9 mL/s vs 8.5 ± 3.2 mL/s; P < .01). The disease-independent widely used threshold of <10 mL/s showed insufficient sensitivity of 88% and specificity of 19% with high false-positive rates of 63% for patients and 69% for controls. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was carried out to define a suitable cutoff value for detection of aspiration of water (area under the curve 0.72, P < .001) in PD patients. The optimized cutoff value was 5.5 mL/s with a sensitivity of 69% and a specificity of 64%.CONCLUSION AND INFERENCES: Measuring swallowing speed is prone to methodological errors and not suitable as a screening instrument to predict aspiration in PD patients.

U2 - 10.1111/nmo.13713

DO - 10.1111/nmo.13713

M3 - SCORING: Journal article

C2 - 31464354

VL - 31

SP - e13713

JO - NEUROGASTROENT MOTIL

JF - NEUROGASTROENT MOTIL

SN - 1350-1925

IS - 12

ER -