Screening for oropharyngeal dysphagia in hospitalized COVID-19 patients: a prospective study.

PURPOSE: To screen for oropharyngeal dysphagia (OD) in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. METHODS: A descriptive longitudinal study was conducted on 500 adult patients with confirmed COVID-19 in the age range of 19-65 years who were admitted to the main university isolation hospital (whether admitted in the ward or the intensive care unit). Screening for OD was done using the Arabic version of the Eating Assessment Tool (EAT-10) and the Yale swallow protocol. RESULTS: 45.4% of the admitted and 40.97% of the discharged COVID-19 patients had a positive screen for OD. Several risk factors for OD could be detected. These include older age, longer duration of presenting symptoms of COVID-19, presence of ageusia and anosmia, presence of dysphonia, ICU admission, lower oxygen saturation, higher respiratory rate, presence of OD at admission, longer duration of hospital stay, and use of noninvasive ventilation (NIV) and/or invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV). CONCLUSIONS: Screening for OD in hospitalized COVID-19 patients is a mandatory procedure, whether for admitted or discharged patients.

Posterior pharyngeal wall augmentation in post-adenoidectomy velopharyngeal insufficiency.

PURPOSE: To assess the efficacy of posterior pharyngeal wall augmentation using septal or conchal cartilages with other bulks-according to the persistent gap and the individual anatomy of each patient-in improving velopharyngeal function in patients who acquired persistent velopharyngeal insufficiency (VPI) post-adenoidectomy. METHODS: Observational descriptive prospective case series of 24 patients (their ages ranged between 3 and 26 years) who developed persistent VPI post-adenoidectomy (more than 3 months) although they had normal speech resonance before adenoidectomy. RESULTS: The present study demonstrated that statistically significant improvement in auditory perceptual assessment (APA) was found regarding all obligatory speech disorders and unintelligibility of speech. Significant improvement was observed in the degree of velar mobility, size of the persistent gap, and the gap distance between velum and posterior pharyngeal wall at rest and during phonation in post-operative evaluation versus pre-operative. A significant change was observed in the closure pattern of the velopharyngeal port (VPP) as all patients turned to coronal closure. CONCLUSIONS: Posterior pharyngeal wall augmentation could be used in VPI post-adenoidectomy up to 7 mm and lead to better speech outcomes. Also, it revealed that using conchal and/or septal cartilage as a graft regardless of the patient's age is a safe procedure.

Acoustic Features of Cry of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Infants.

Previous research has demonstrated differences in the acoustic features of crying signals between deaf and typical hearing (TH) infants. This study aims at comparing the acoustic parameters of cries of infants with different degrees of deafness versus TH infants. About 110 infants aged 6-12 months (61 TH infants, 34 infants with bilateral deafness of variable degrees and 15 infants with unilateral deafness) were enrolled in the study. Results indicated that the most important acoustic parameters to demonstrate the difference between the crying of TH infants and deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) infants as well as between the crying of infants with different degrees of deafness are F0, cry duration, intensity, F2, and F4. In terms of accuracy, the parameter that showed the highest accuracy to differentiate between TH infants and DHH infants was F0 (74.5%). The accuracy of the combined acoustic parameters (F0, cry duration, intensity, and F4) was 70%. F0 was considered the best predictor and F4 the second best predictor of severity of deafness.