ArticleDysphagia2025
Accuracy of Dysphagia Screening by Non-clinical Research Staff in the Emergency Department.
Article in Dysphagia, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Although the emergency department (ED) is the initial care setting for the majority of older adults requiring hospital admission, there is a paucity of ED-based dysphagia research in this at-risk population. This is driven by barriers to dysphagia evaluation in this complex care environment. Therefore, we assessed the reliability of trained, non-clinical ED research staff in administering dysphagia screening tools compared to trained speech pathologists (SLPs). We also aimed to determine perceptual screening discrepancies (e.g. voice change) between clinical and non-clinical staff. Forty-two older adults with suspected pneumonia were recruited during an ED visit and underwent dysphagia (Toronto Bedside Swallow Screening Tool; TOR-BSST©) and aspiration (3-oz water swallow test; 3-oz WST) screening by trained non-clinical research staff. Audio-recordings of screenings were re-rated post-hoc by trained, blinded SLPs with discrepancies resolved via consensus. Cohen's kappa (unweighted) revealed moderate agreement in pass/fail ratings between clinical and non-clinical staff for both the TOR-BSST© (k = 0.75) and the 3 oz WST (k = 0.66) corresponding to excellent sensitivity and good specificity for both the TOR-BSST (SN = 94%, SP = 85%) and the 3 oz WST (SN = 90%, SP = 81%). Further analysis of TOR-BSST perceptual parameters revealed that most discrepancies between clinicians and non-clinicians resulted from over-diagnosis of change in vocal quality (53%). These results support the feasibility of non-clinical research staff administering screening tools for dysphagia and aspiration in the ED. Dysphagia screening may not necessitate clinical staff involvement, which may improve feasibility of large-scale ED research. Future training of research staff should focus on perceptual assessment of vocal quality.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.