Once your swallowing disorder has been evaluated and diagnosed, your speech pathologist will formulate a plan of care to improve your swallowing function. This might include modifying your diet so that foods and liquid are easier to swallow, using head postures and other strategies to increase comfort and safety during meals, and initiating a course of individualized outpatient swallowing therapy.
Swallowing therapy involves completing a variety of exercises to help strengthen the muscles of your tongue and throat so you can swallow more easily and safely. Your clinician will typically see you for 4-6 sessions, 1 per week, to help you learn the exercises. It is important that you practice the exercises consistently at home in addition to work with your clinician. Our clinicians are trained in a range of both traditional and innovative therapy techniques:
Dysphagia is the term used to denote a condition when one experiences difficulty swallowing. Some of the common symptoms of dysphagia include having pain while swallowing, sensation of food getting stuck in the throat, heartburn, regurgitation, vomiting, sudden loss of weight etc. Dysphagia can be for liquids, solids or both. Stroke, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, mouth cancer and neck surgery are the common causes of most swallowing disorders.