Characteristics of dry chin-tuck swallowing vibrations and sounds
July 2, 2015
Objective: The effects of the chin-tuck maneuver, a technique commonly employed to compensate for dysphagia, on cervical auscultation are not fully understood. Characterizing a technique that is known to affect swallowing function is an important step on the way to developing a new instrumentationbased swallowing screening tool. Methods: In this study, we recorded data from 55 adult participants who each completed five saliva swallows in a chin-tuck position. The resulting data was processed using previously designed filtering and segmentation algorithms. We then calculated 9 time, frequency, and timefrequency domain features for each independent signal. Results: We found that multiple frequency and time domain features varied significantly between male and female subjects as well as between swallowing sounds and vibrations. However, our analysis showed that participant age did not play a significant role on the values of the extracted features. Finally, we found that various frequency features corresponding to swallowing vibrations did demonstrate statistically significant variation between the neutral and chin-tuck positions but sounds showed no changes between these two positions. Conclusion: The chin-tuck maneuver affects many facets of swallowing vibrations and sounds and its effects can be monitored via cervical auscultation. Significance: These results suggest that a subject’s swallowing technique does need to be accounted for when monitoring their performance with cervical auscultation based instrumentation.
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