Oropharyngeal Dysphagia in Acute Stroke – Predictors of Swallowing Impairments and Correlation of CNS Lesion Location with Symptoms of Dysphagia

Abstract

Oropharyngeal dysphagia (OD) affects 80% of patients in the acute phase of stroke. The most frequently mentioned predictors of dysphagia in this group of patients are: age, presence of dysarthria, high score in the NIHSS scale with a cut-off point depending on the location of supra- or
infratentorial brain damage, volume of the stroke lesion.

OD is a symptom of cortical and subcortical lesions, as well as those located in the pons and medulla. The article discusses the results of last year’s studies on the correlation of the location of the stroke lesion with the presence and specific symptoms of OD. There were also described clinical cases of patients in the acute phase of stroke from our own speech therapy practice in the stroke department, confirming the reports from the world literature