Dysphagia Screening may Help Diagnose Acute Stroke, discovers study
Dysphagia is common following stroke, affecting 55% of acute stroke patients and leads to complications such as aspiration pneumonia, malnutrition, dependency, and mortality. A recent study suggests health benefits from early dysphagia screening in adult patients diagnosed with acute stroke. The study findings were published in the Journal of American Heart Association on 05 June 2021.
Best practice stroke guidelines state level 2 evidence to support early detection for screening, yet practice remains varied. The current evidence, based on only randomized controlled trial (RCT) data, leaves the healthcare professional unclear as to best practice for patients with stroke. However, the evidence from experimental trials alone is inconclusive. Therefore, researchers of the University of Toronto, Canada conducted a meta-analysis to assess whether dysphagia screening benefits from both trial and observational data.
In this meta-analysis, the researchers searched seven electronic databases. Among 8860 citations, the researchers screened 5996 unique abstracts and included a total of 30 articles, 24 observational and 6 randomized trials for the analysis. The articles were screened by 2 independent blinded raters using a priori criteria and discrepancies resolved by consensus. They used Review Manger 5.3 to pool estimates of health benefit for homogeneous data.
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