Assessment of Swallowing Ability Scale for Oral and Oropharyngeal Cancer Patients

Abstract

The Swallowing Ability Scale (SAS) has been recently reported by us. This scale is a new method to assess dysphagia after therapy for oral and oropharyngeal cancer. The preliminary results on 23 patients showed that the scale was reliable and sensitive to functional differences across a broad spectrum of oropharyngeal dysphagia after therapy. This paper confirmed the above facts in 73 oral and oropharyngeal cancer patients who were treated in two hospitals between 1995 and 1996. As stated in the previous paper, SAS consists of a 2-step questionnaire : the MTF score and the Dysphagia score. The MTF score is a simple and practical assessment tool consisting of three subscales : 1) Method of intake, 2) Time of intake, and 3) Food. The Dysphagia score is a relevant assessment tool for defining patients' anatomic or physiologic swallowing disorders. In 40 patients with wide resection of the tongue, the Dysphagia score (p<0.05) and the MTF score (p<0.01) were significantly decreased. And we found a correlation between the MTF score and the Dysphagia score (r=0.78, p<0.001) in 73 patients. The usefulness of the SAS will be further studied for the assessment of rehabilitation to improve postoperative dysphagia.