This week I am exploring feeding issues found with children diagnosed with cerebral palsy. The information surrounding this topic is very vast and extensive. My goal for this post is to provide useful information and resources for both therapists and parents. Let's begin with WHO is capable of addressing feeding issues with young children. ...

Northern Speech Services' Dysphagia is an essential app for every SLP working with adults with swallowing dysfunction. It provides images of the anatomy seen in a video fluoroscopic swallow study (VFSS or MBS), with videos of a normal swallow in two views and several types of impairments in an adult. The images are the ones used in the MBSImPTM ...

Hiatal hernia is a diagnosis commonly seen by SLPs in adult and geriatric settings, and can often be hidden by other complaints and symptoms of disorders that affect swallowing, leading to the hiatal hernia being undiagnosed. A hiatal hernia specifically refers to the protrusion of part of the stomach through the esophageal opening, or hiatus, ...

Caregivers often become quite upset over a loved one's behaviors during meals. A family might think that a relative would love to visit a favorite restaurant, only to witness a catastrophic reaction as the person with dementia is faced with a change in routine, a place that may be unfamiliar,  and ...

 Here is another installment in dining strategies for people with dementia. I think the educated and motivated clinician can provide caregivers with many options to use in order to promote the patient's ability to dine as independently as possible, while maintaining and healthy nutritional status.   The patient eats too quickly or is ...

 Many patients with dementia are described by family and caregivers as having decreased appetites or as having lost interest in meals. Many of these same patients will continue to eat sweets, snacks, or consume beverages, but will not sit for long enough to eat a meal, or will not eat with utensils. I observe all of my patients while eating, ...

In the SNF, therapists often get accustomed to choosing pureed, mechanical soft, or regular diet textures. At times, I request a mechanical soft meal with pureed meats, and some facilities ask us to specify mechanical soft with chopped meats or mechanical soft with ground meats. In some facilities, mechanical soft texture is by default softer ...

In long term care, the title of Speech Pathologist is often more closely associated with swallowing than with communication. In my experience, most referrals are due to patients either not consuming an adequate amount of foods and liquids, to patients coughing during meals, or to patients demonstrating texture aversion and/or behaviors such as ...

Recently, I have been thinking of goals and how we write them. Many of us use a ''goal bank'' at our jobs, which is helpful because we don't have to type the same wording over and over; however, we have to be very careful not to fall into the pitfall of ''cookie-cutter'' goals. We all learned to write clear, measurable goals in graduate school, ...

As we consider sensory changes that occur throughout the aging process, it is important to remember the subtle differences that will manifest and how they might affect a patient's participation in therapy and daily activities, as well as his or her quality of life. My colleagues and I often notice that while we are usually warm, often ...