Scientific evidence supporting the Eating Assessment Tool -10 (EAT-10) and its use in routine clinical practice
- 08/04/2024
Video description
Recorded webinar of Dr Ana Canton Blanco discussing the scientific evidence supporting the EAT-10 validation tool for dysphagia.
Oropharyngeal dysphagia (OD) is a highly prevalent medical condition with severe complications such as dehydration, malnutrition, and respiratory infections.
Recognition of dysphagia in the medical community can be poor, with health services not routinely screening older patients for dysphagia and often unable to adequately support staff with identifying and diagnosing it. Symptoms of dysphagia, such as coughing, may not be recognised as a problem by people or their caregivers and are often considered a trivial finding. These are some of the reasons why many patients are diagnosed during hospitalisation, after developing respiratory infections or pneumonia due to an impairment of the safety of their swallowing. Undiagnosed swallowing problems put this group of people at risk, leading to complication, reduced quality of life and high healthcare costs. In a recent publication by Clave et al, it was demonstrated that an in-patient with undetected dysphagia before hospitalisation, has a cost increase of 40.36% and an 8.42-day hospital stay.
Therefore, it is time to act!