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DROOLING IN PARKINSON'S DISEASE: A NOVEL TOOL FOR ASSESSMENT OF SWALLOW FREQUENCY
Author(s) -
Marks Lizzy,
Weinreich Jonathan
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
international journal of language and communication disorders
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.101
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1460-6984
pISSN - 1368-2822
DOI - 10.3109/13682820109177899
Subject(s) - drooling , swallowing , laptop , parkinson's disease , audiology , dysarthria , microphone , psychology , physical medicine and rehabilitation , medicine , computer science , disease , surgery , telecommunications , sound pressure , pathology , operating system
A non‐invasive way to obtain objective measurements of swallowing frequency and thus indirectly, drooling was required as part of the study ‘Drooling in Parkinson's disease: objective measurement and response to therapy’. A hard disk, digital recorder was developed, for use on a laptop computer, which was capable of collecting large quantities of swallowing data from an anticipated 40 patients and 10 controls. An electret microphone was taped to the subjects' larynx for recording the swallow sounds when drinking 150 ml of water and at rest for 30 minutes. The software provides an accurate visual display of the audio‐signal allowing the researcher easy access to any segment of the recording and to mark and extract the swallow events, so that swallow frequency may be efficiently and accurately ascertained. Preliminary results are presented.