Article

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the validity and reliability of the Swallowing
Assessment of Saliva in detection of aspiration risk. DESIGN: Validation study.
SETTING: Inpatient neurorehabilitation centre. SUBJECTS: Adult patients with
acquired brain injury. A total of 43 patients for concurrent validity and 33
other patients for inter-rater reliability. INTERVENTIONS: Concurrent validity
was established with blinded Swallowing Assessment of Saliva and endoscopic
evaluation within a 24-hour time interval. Inter-rater reliability was
established with two blinded Swallowing Assessments of Saliva within a one-hour
time interval. MAIN MEASURES: The Swallowing Assessment of Saliva is a seven-item
scale with a combination of swallowing and non-swallowing items. It is based on
the Facial-Oral Tract Therapy approach. RESULTS: The Swallowing Assessment of
Saliva had a sensitivity of 91%, 95% confidence interval (CI) (59; 100), a
specificity of 88% %, 95% CI (71; 97) and a kappa coefficient of 0.87 +/-0.17 in
detection of aspiration risk. Furthermore, analyses showed that experienced and
inexperienced occupational therapists performed equally in detection of
aspiration risk. CONCLUSION: The Swallowing Assessment of Saliva is a simple,
sensitive and reliable assessment for detecting aspiration risk in patients with
acquired brain injury.
CI - (c) The Author(s) 2015.

Langue : ANGLAIS