{"id":11777,"date":"2025-05-12T09:28:42","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T07:28:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/?p=11777"},"modified":"2025-05-09T11:00:07","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T09:00:07","slug":"swallowing-disorders-in-neurological-conditions-and-intellectual-disabilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/en\/swallowing-disorders-in-neurological-conditions-and-intellectual-disabilities\/","title":{"rendered":"Swallowing Disorders in Neurological Conditions and Intellectual Disabilities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Swallowing difficulties can reduce the enjoyment of eating and often lead to anxiety, shame, and social isolation. Additionally, dysphagia is a major risk factor for problems such as malnutrition, dehydration, pneumonia, and even death.<br \/>\nDysphagia is common among older adults with neurological conditions and people with intellectual disabilities, affecting 30% of nursing home residents and 85% of individuals with intellectual disabilities in Europe (Richtlijnenlangdurigezorg.nl).<\/p>\n<p><strong><br \/>\nImproving Swallowing with the SilverFit Rephagia<\/strong><br \/>\nTo effectively treat swallowing difficulties, function-oriented swallowing training is recommended. These trainings focus, for example, on strengthening the swallowing muscles or improving hyolaryngeal elevation, as seen with the &#8216;Mendelsohn maneuver.&#8217; The Federation of Medical Specialists also recommends the use of surface electromyography (sEMG) as biofeedback to support active swallowing rehabilitation.<br \/>\nOne tool used for this purpose is the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/en\/systems\/silverfit-rephagia\/\">SilverFit Rephagia<\/a>. This system uses sEMG electrodes to visualize the activity of superficial swallowing muscles through (game-based) visualizations on a screen. This direct visual feedback (biofeedback) encourages and motivates both the client and the therapist.<\/p>\n<p><strong><br \/>\nInsight Through Biofeedback, Motivation Through Gameplay<\/strong><br \/>\nA study by Galek and Bice (2021) investigated the effectiveness of the SilverFit Rephagia in performing powerful swallowing movements. A total of 82 healthy adults without swallowing disorders participated in the study. They were randomly divided into two groups: a control group without feedback, and a test group that received both verbal and visual feedback (using SilverFit Rephagia) while swallowing various liquid volumes.<br \/>\nThe results showed that the group training with the SilverFit Rephagia performed significantly better than the control group. This indicates that using the SilverFit Rephagia has a positive effect on swallowing strength across different liquid volumes.<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-11779\" src=\"https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/English-Resultaten-Rephagia-artikel-300x169.webp\" alt=\"\" width=\"829\" height=\"467\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/English-Resultaten-Rephagia-artikel-300x169.webp 300w, https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/English-Resultaten-Rephagia-artikel-1024x576.webp 1024w, https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/English-Resultaten-Rephagia-artikel-768x432.webp 768w, https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/English-Resultaten-Rephagia-artikel-1536x864.webp 1536w, https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/English-Resultaten-Rephagia-artikel-2048x1152.webp 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 829px) 100vw, 829px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reference:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Galek, K. E., &amp; Bice, E. M. (2021). The influence of surface electromyography visual and clinician verbal feedback on swallow effort ratio at different bolus volumes in a healthy population. <em>Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica<\/em>, <em>73<\/em>(6), 449-454.<\/li>\n<li>Richtlijnenlangdurigezorg.nl. (2023).\u00a0<i>Richtlijn Slikproblemen<\/i>.\u00a0<span class=\"url\">https:\/\/www.richtlijnenlangdurigezorg.nl\/uploads\/pdf\/project\/project_98d436f3-596a-409c-9709-f1c4e4d63745_slikproblemen__authorized-at_14-11-2023.pdf<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Want to learn more about this study and other research involving the SilverFit Rephagia?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Swallowing difficulties can reduce the enjoyment of eating and often lead to anxiety, shame, and social isolation. Additionally, dysphagia is a major risk factor for problems such as malnutrition, dehydration, pneumonia, and even death. Dysphagia is common among older adults with neurological conditions and people with intellectual disabilities, affecting 30% of nursing home residents and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":11762,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-silverfit","category-silverfit-rephagia-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11777"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11784,"href":"https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11777\/revisions\/11784"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.silverfit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}