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Tongue Rehabilitation Device for Dysphagic Patients

Dysphagia refers to difficulty in swallowing often associated with syndromic disorders. In dysphagic patients’ rehabilitation, tongue motility is usually treated and monitored via simple exercises, in which the tongue is pushed against a depressor held by the speech therapist in different directions...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Milazzo, Mario, Panepinto, Andrea, Sabatini, Angelo Maria, Danti, Serena
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6865205/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31717807
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s19214657
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author Milazzo, Mario
Panepinto, Andrea
Sabatini, Angelo Maria
Danti, Serena
author_facet Milazzo, Mario
Panepinto, Andrea
Sabatini, Angelo Maria
Danti, Serena
author_sort Milazzo, Mario
collection PubMed
description Dysphagia refers to difficulty in swallowing often associated with syndromic disorders. In dysphagic patients’ rehabilitation, tongue motility is usually treated and monitored via simple exercises, in which the tongue is pushed against a depressor held by the speech therapist in different directions. In this study, we developed and tested a simple pressure/force sensor device, named “Tonic Tongue (ToTo)”, intended to support training and monitoring tasks for the rehabilitation of tongue musculature. It consists of a metallic frame holding a ball bearing support equipped with a sterile disposable depressor, whose angular displacements are counterbalanced by extensional springs. The conversion from angular displacement to force is managed using a simple mechanical model of ToTo operation. Since the force exerted by the tongue in various directions can be estimated, quantitative assessment of the outcome of a given training program is possible. A first prototype of ToTo was tested on 26 healthy adults, who were trained for one month. After the treatment, we observed a statistically significant improvement with a force up to 2.2 N (median value) in all tested directions of pushing, except in the downward direction, in which the improvement was slightly higher than 5 N (median value). ToTo promises to be an innovative and reliable device that can be used for the rehabilitation of dysphagic patients. Moreover, since it is a self-standing device, it could be used as a point-of-care solution for in-home rehabilitation management of dysphasia.
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spelling pubmed-68652052019-12-09 Tongue Rehabilitation Device for Dysphagic Patients Milazzo, Mario Panepinto, Andrea Sabatini, Angelo Maria Danti, Serena Sensors (Basel) Article Dysphagia refers to difficulty in swallowing often associated with syndromic disorders. In dysphagic patients’ rehabilitation, tongue motility is usually treated and monitored via simple exercises, in which the tongue is pushed against a depressor held by the speech therapist in different directions. In this study, we developed and tested a simple pressure/force sensor device, named “Tonic Tongue (ToTo)”, intended to support training and monitoring tasks for the rehabilitation of tongue musculature. It consists of a metallic frame holding a ball bearing support equipped with a sterile disposable depressor, whose angular displacements are counterbalanced by extensional springs. The conversion from angular displacement to force is managed using a simple mechanical model of ToTo operation. Since the force exerted by the tongue in various directions can be estimated, quantitative assessment of the outcome of a given training program is possible. A first prototype of ToTo was tested on 26 healthy adults, who were trained for one month. After the treatment, we observed a statistically significant improvement with a force up to 2.2 N (median value) in all tested directions of pushing, except in the downward direction, in which the improvement was slightly higher than 5 N (median value). ToTo promises to be an innovative and reliable device that can be used for the rehabilitation of dysphagic patients. Moreover, since it is a self-standing device, it could be used as a point-of-care solution for in-home rehabilitation management of dysphasia. MDPI 2019-10-26 /pmc/articles/PMC6865205/ /pubmed/31717807 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s19214657 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Milazzo, Mario
Panepinto, Andrea
Sabatini, Angelo Maria
Danti, Serena
Tongue Rehabilitation Device for Dysphagic Patients
title Tongue Rehabilitation Device for Dysphagic Patients
title_full Tongue Rehabilitation Device for Dysphagic Patients
title_fullStr Tongue Rehabilitation Device for Dysphagic Patients
title_full_unstemmed Tongue Rehabilitation Device for Dysphagic Patients
title_short Tongue Rehabilitation Device for Dysphagic Patients
title_sort tongue rehabilitation device for dysphagic patients
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6865205/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31717807
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s19214657
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