ABSTRACT
Objective To explore the effect of early comprehensive rehabilitation therapy on dysphagia after stroke. Methods A total of 120 stroke patients with dysphagia were collected from December 2006 to May 2009 and divided into 3 trial groups and a control group randomly.No treatment was given to patients in the control group.Patients in trial group 1(T1)were given rehabilitation training,while patients in trial groups 2(T2)and 3(T3)were treated with VitalStim and electrical acupuncture,respectively,in addition to the rehabilitation training.A standardized swallowing assessment (SSA) and the swallowing quality of life(SWAL-QOL) scale were used to evalu-ate all the patients before and after 4 weeks of treatment. ResuIts No statistically significant difference was re-vealed before the treatment among the groups in terms of the patients'sex,age,course of disease,SSA or SWAL-QOL results.Statistically significant improvement was observed after treatment in the 3 trial group,but not in the control group with regard to the SSA and SWAL-QOL scores compared with those before treatment.The trial groups all had higher scores than the control group after treatment.while T2 and T3 had higher scores than T1 after treatment.There was no statistically significant difference between groups T2 and T3.Conclusions Early compre-hensive rehabilitation therapy can improve swallowing and the quality of life of stroke patients with dysphagia.Reha-bilitation combined with neuromuscular electrical stimulation provides effects similar to that of training combined with electrical accupuneture,and is more effective than simple training in treating dysphagia.