Intraoral Swallow Pressure Profiles: General Features and Aids to Categorization

Purpose: The primary goal of this study was to establish a normative data set representing intraoral time series swallow pressure profiles for healthy adults using a novel wearable intraoral pressure sensing system, OroPress, developed to help with dysphagia (swallow disorder) clinical screening. Methods: Swallow intraoral pressure-time profiles for 35 healthy adults (17 male, 18 female) swallowing water (3×5cm3; 3×10cm3) and custard (3×5cm3) boluses (N= 9 × 35 = 315) were recorded using OroPress. Results: General swallow profile traits are identified to characterise an effective, efficient swallow. A profile-specific swallow envelope function is devised which in combination with profile metrics, provides a simple means of categorizing swallows as effective or impaired. Conclusion: The swallow profile data trace with superimposed and colour coded peaks, envelope function and related swallow metrics provides a simple human readable graphic to aid the real-time instrumented identification of subjects warranting more in-depth clinical assessment. It may also prove useful in the selection of training set profiles for machine learning and other analysis tools which could improve the discriminatory capabilities of intraoral pressure measurement in dysphagia diagnostics.