Effect of Modified Shaker Exercise on the Amplitude and Duration of Swallowing Sounds: Evidence from Cervical Auscultation

OBJECTIVE: Anecdotal evidence shows that the Shaker exercise and its modifications improve pharyngeal muscle contraction. However, there is no experimental evidence for the same. Thus, the present study examined the effect of modified Shaker exercise on the amplitude and duration of pharyngeal muscle contraction using cervical auscultation. DESIGN: The study follows a cross-sectional study design, where 50 healthy individuals (23 males and 27 females) performed modified Shaker exercise and noneffortful swallow during 10 ml water swallowing. Swallow sound characteristics were analyzed with and without modified Shaker exercise using cervical auscultation. RESULTS: The results of mixed ANOVA revealed significant differences for the amplitude of swallow sound with modified Shaker exercise (mean = 47.24, SD = 20.64) when compared to noneffortful swallow (mean = 28.19, SD = 10.26) at p < 0.05. However, no significant difference was obtained for the swallow sound duration with (mean = 0.19, SD = 0.07) and without (mean = 0.18, SD = 0.07) modified Shaker exercise at p > 0.05. No significant difference across the genders was also noted at p > 0.05. CONCLUSION: The outcomes of the study suggest that modified Shaker exercise improves the amplitude of pharyngeal muscle contraction. Further studies are needed to confirm this finding using gold standard tools like videofluoroscopy.