Dysphagia is a common and serious problem after stroke involving both cerebral hemispheres or brainstem.
When dysphagia is continued for a long time, it can lead to malnutrition, inadequate hydration, aspiration pneumonia and air way obstruction.
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Dysphagia is a common and serious problem after stroke involving both cerebral hemispheres or brainstem.
When dysphagia is continued for a long time, it can lead to malnutrition, inadequate hydration, aspiration pneumonia and air way obstruction.
To prevent and solve these problems, nurses need to be able to facilitate deglutition for patients who have dysphagia to improve oropharyngeal function as soon as possible after the damage to the brain.
A sensory stimulation method ie quick stretch, vibration or themal stimulation technique will stimulate the neuron through extroceptor and proprioceptor, provoking skin and muscle contraction as well as antagonic muscle suppression.
As a result in influences on oropharyngeal function reregulation and the prognosis of the stroke patients ultimately.
Thus, it is important to develop effective nursing intervention methods.
The purpose of this study is to identify the effect of a nursing intervention using sensory stimulation technique in dysphagic patients.
The design utilized for this study was quasi-experimental with a nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest design.
This study was done between December 20, 2000 and March 10, 2001 and the subjects of the study were 30 patients who were hospitalized in the oriental medicine hospital of K. University.To prevent the diffusion of the experiment, the control and experimented group were selected, 15 each, from seperated wards.
A specific stimulation plan was devised based on a dysfunctional area of the subjects.
For each modality, subjects were systemically sitmulated for 30 minutes, prior to each meal and 3 times per day.Treatment was implemented for a week.
The data were analyzed by SPSS PC program using x2-test, Wilcoxon Signed Rank test and Mann-Whitney U test.
The results of this study are as follows :
1. The experimental group which were implemented with sensory stimulation showed increased tongue control score than the control group which indicated statistically significant difference.
2. While the experimental group which were implemented with sensory stimulation showed increased chewing ability and lip movement score, it was not statistically significant.
The reason not to support the hypothesis seems that the treatment for language disturbance accompanished with the stroke patients, mainly stimulate the articulation and tongue movement, so that it influenced the result of this study, as being similar to my sensory stimulation program.
Therefore, one can infer from this study that sensory stumulation using ice, quick stretch, etc., was effective in improving oropharyngeal function in patient with dysphagia.