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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...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2019
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6865205 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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