Columbia Memorial offers new therapy for swallowing disorders
Columbia Memorial Hospital introduces an innovative, new treatment for patients who suffer from dysphagia, a painful and often debilitating swallowing disorder.
According to Barbara Kellerhouse of the Speech Pathology Department at the hospital, the therapy is known as VitalStim and uses non-invasive electrical stimulation to re-educate throat muscles needed for swallowing.
Dysphagia, if untreated, can lead to complications such as choking, bronchospasm, increased infection, chronic malnutrition, life-threatening dehydration, significant weight loss, social isolation and even death.
VitalStim, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is applied externally and delivers small currents to the neck to stimulate atrophied swallowing muscles.
“With repeated therapy, throat muscles are re-trained until the patient reaches an optimum level of swallowing function,” says Kellerhouse.
“This is a new breakthrough in treating dysphagia. There are better outcomes that are simply not possible with traditional therapies alone,” she says.
According to Kellerhouse many patients show dramatic improvements in their ability to swallow and have returned to a more normal diet resulting in a better
quality of life.
Even patients on feeding tubes respond to the therapy, which may allow for
earlier removal of the tube, according to published reports.
Some 15 million Americans suffer from dysphagia. One million new patients are diagnosed annually. The disorder affects upwards to 75 percent of stroke patients and patients who undergo radiation therapy for head and neck cancer. According to releases, estimates of dysphagia’s prevalence in neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s and Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS) run as high as 90%.
For more information about dysphagia and this new therapy, contact the Speech Pathology Department at 518.828.8295.
