ArticleFrontiers in rehabilitation sciences2025
Effectiveness and cost savings of employing speech therapists in a home artificial nutrition unit.
Article in Frontiers in rehabilitation sciences, 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
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The Home Artificial Nutrition Unit (HANU) deals with both dysphagic patients receiving enteral and parenteral nutrition and patients who can eat orally with restrictions. In the Lazio Region, the HANU prescribes water gels and thickeners, supplied by the National Health Service (NHS), for safe hydration. Before the employment of a Speech and Language Pathologist (SLP) in the HANU (January 2023), prescriptions were standardized, regardless of the swallowing impairment severity: four jars of thickeners per patient/month and six water gels daily. The Clinical Swallowing Evaluation (CSE) made by the SLP allowed to customize the amount of thickeners and water gels based on the actual needs of the patient. The aim of this study is to investigate the cost savings resulting from the employment of an SLP in the HANU. A descriptive retrospective study was conducted, which analyzed the SLP activity in the HANU of ASL Roma 3 (January-December 2023). The study group consisted of 149 patients (61 males, 88 females with a mean age of 76.2 years) with different pathologies. The cost of each product (thickeners and gelified water) was provided by the Regional Pharmacy. The annual savings were calculated as the difference between the standardized prescription of products (as usual care in our department) and personalized prescription after SLP assessment. Since January 2023, there has been an increasing trend in requests for SLP assessments. The employment of an SLP in the HANU resulted in an annual economic saving of €30,278.67. This preliminary study shows how the employment of an SLP in the HANU can reduce inappropriate prescriptions of thickeners and water gels, thus ensuring cost savings.
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.