Chest
Clinical InvestigationsCOPDOropharyngeal Deglutition in Stable COPD
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
All patients attended the outpatient pulmonary clinic at the Veterans Administration Chicago Healthcare System-Lakeside Division between September 1998 and March 1999. Twenty patients were selected in a consecutive manner. The inclusion criteria were the following: (1) ≥55 years of age; (2) a smoking history ≥30 pack-years; and (3) a history, physical examination findings, chest radiograph findings, and pulmonary function test (PFT) results that are compatible with COPD, as defined by the
Results
There were 20 participants with COPD in this study, and 19 were men. Sixteen participants had an FEV1 < 50% of predicted. Nine participants were receiving home oxygen therapy. The demographics and PFT characteristics of these patients are shown in Table 1 . Four patients (20%) reported mild and intermittent dysphagia. None of these four patients had complained of these symptoms prior to completing the dysphagia questionnaire. For all patients, respiratory rate and pulse oximetry remained
Discussion
Our study is the first clinical study providing detailed analysis of swallowing in stable hyperinflated patients with COPD. The data demonstrate that COPD is associated with abnormal swallowing physiology. Abnormalities consisted of frequent spontaneous and protective maneuvers and decreased laryngeal elevation during swallowing. We suspect that protective swallowing maneuvers explain the absence of aspiration in this study.
There are limited data correlating COPD with aspiration. Cohello9 found
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This research was supported by grant P01 CA 40007 from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health.