Petra Pluschinski, Eugen Zaretsky, Timo Stöver, Joseph Murray, Robert Sader, Christiane Hey
Accumulation of secretions within the hypopharynx, aditus laryngis, and trachea is one characteristic of severe dysphagia and is of high clinical and therapeutic relevance. For the graduation of the secretion severity level, a secretion scale was provided by Murray et al. in 1996. The purpose of the study presented here is the validation of this scale by analyzing the intra-rater and inter-rater reliability as well as concurrent validity. For examination of reliability and validity, a reference standard was defined by two expert clinicians who reviewed 40 video recordings of fiberendoscopic swallowing evaluations, with 10 videos for each severity grade...
October 2016: European Archives of Oto-rhino-laryngology