Characterizing Swallows From People With Neurodegenerative Diseases Using High-Resolution Cervical Auscultation Signals and Temporal and Spatial Swallow Kinematic Measurements.

Purpose The prevalence of dysphagia in patients with neurodegenerative diseases (ND) is alarmingly high and frequently results in morbidity and accelerated mortality due to subsequent adverse events (e.g., aspiration pneumonia). Swallowing in patients with ND should be continuously monitored due to the progressive disease nature. Access to instrumental swallow evaluations can be challenging, and limited studies have quantified changes in temporal/spatial swallow kinematic measures in patients with ND. High-resolution cervical auscultation (HRCA), a dysphagia screening method, has accurately differentiated between safe and unsafe swallows, identified swallow kinematic events (e.g., laryngeal vestibule closure [LVC]), and classified swallows between healthy adults and patients with ND. This study aimed to (a) compare temporal/spatial swallow kinematic measures between patients with ND and healthy adults and (b) investigate HRCA's ability to annotate swallow kinematic events in patients with ND. We hypothesized there would be significant differences in temporal/spatial swallow measurements between groups and that HRCA would accurately annotate swallow kinematic events in patients with ND. Method Participants underwent videofluoroscopic swallowing studies with concurrent HRCA. We used linear mixed models to compare temporal/spatial swallow measurements (