Clinical lung and heart/lung transplantationAssessing Oropharyngeal Dysphagia After Lung Transplantation: Altered Swallowing Mechanisms and Increased Morbidity
Section snippets
Methods
After local institutional review board approval waiving individual patient consent due to the retrospective study nature, a retrospective review of 263 consecutive lung transplantation patients was undertaken. Patients were treated at a single center between January 2001 and July 2005. Pre-operative demographic data and peri- and post-operative details were recorded for each patient.
Speech pathology consultation was obtained in all patients post-operatively after LT and involved, at a minimum,
Results
Two hundred sixty-three patients underwent LT during the study period. Over 97.3% underwent bilateral LT and did not differ between groups. Ten patients (3.8%) underwent re-do LT. Underlying clinical diagnoses precipitating LT are shown in Figure 2.
Pre-operative and demographic data are shown in Table 1. The two groups analyzed were well matched with regard to age, percent males and history of prior thoracic surgery. However, Group 1 had a significantly higher rate of pre-operative GERD, as
Discussion
Previous work has demonstrated a strong correlation between GERD and lung allograft injury in the form of BOS.1, 3, 4 We hypothesized that repetitive microaspiration events are a contributing factor in lung allograft dysfunction, and recent data from other groups corroborate these assumptions.5, 13 In the present study, we have quantified the prevalence of new-onset oropharyngeal dysphagia and the attendant tracheal aspiration of thin liquids among patients who underwent formal swallowing
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