Dysphagia Research Bites

How many times does your patient swallow in a minute? It sounds like a simple question but the answer might tell you more than you'd expect. In this episode of Dysphagia Research Bites, Chantelle sits down with Dr Sonal Pathak to explore spontaneous swallowing frequency: what it is, how it's measured, and why it could become one of the most practical objective tools in your clinical toolki...

Title: What Were We Doing Before? VFSS Reference Values and the Case for Quantitative Measurement with Dr Catriona Steele   Show Notes What if you could interpret a video fluoroscopy report the way a doctor reads a blood test, with clear reference ranges, and the ability to say with confidence whether a value is within or outside what's expected for a healthy adult? That's exactly what Dr...

Aspiration and aspiration pneumonia are not the same thing. We know this theoretically. In this episode of Dysphagia Research Bites, Chantelle sits down with Melissa Kane to unpack a 2022 tutorial paper that illustrates the case for looking beyond aspiration itself and toward the individual: their host defences, their medical complexity, their oral health, their lifestyle, when determining the rea...

In this episode of Dysphagia Research Bites, Chantelle sits down with writer, speaker, and educator Yvonne McClaren — a qualified chef, winemaker, and head and neck cancer survivor living with chronic dysphagia — to talk about the parts of dysphagia care that rarely make it into our clinical training. Yvonne shares her experience of going from eating her way through back alleys in Vietnam to not b...

What if one of the most overlooked aspects of dysphagia management isn't about swallowing at all — it's about chewing? In this episode of Dysphagia Research Bites, Chantelle sits down with Carol, an oral health therapist who works with adults with disability and complex needs, to unpack the Functional Chewing Training (FuCT) protocol. Yes, the article they discuss was written for children...

In this episode of Dysphagia Research Bites, Chantelle sits down with Dr Phoebe Macrae from the University of Canterbury to unpack the evidence on cough reflex testing: what it tells us, what it doesn't, and whether clinicians are making a dangerous assumption when Cough Reflex Testing (CRT) results aren't available.   In this episode we cover:   What cough reflex testing is and how it wor...

If you've ever felt like your dysphagia training just doesn't quite fit when you're sitting at someone's kitchen table, you're not wrong, and this episode is going to explain exactly why. In this solo episode of Dysphagia Research Bites, Chantelle shares the framework at the heart of her clinical practice and the reason she started this podcast and her business: Dysphagia manag...

What does it actually look like to assess swallowing difficulties in an adult who has eaten a certain way their entire life, and whose "textbook" may look nothing like yours? In this episode of Dysphagia Research Bites, Chantelle sits down with Jen Biener, a speech-language pathologist specialising in adults with developmental disabilities, to dig into a Dutch retrospective study on the...

If there's one thing that hasn't aged well in dysphagia management, it's the idea that swallowing is only a reflex. Over the past few decades, our understanding of cortical control in swallowing has fundamentally shifted, and so have our approaches to rehabilitation. In this episode, Professor Maggie-Lee Huckabee walks us through that evolution: from reflex-based compensation, to muscl...

If you're a speech pathologist working in the community, particularly in Australia or with adults with developmental disabilities, this episode is for you. But if you work with risk feeding plans in any setting, including the UK, there's plenty here that will resonate too. In this episode of Dysphagia Research Bites, Chantelle hosts a panel discussion with speech pathologists: Meredith Lan...

The guidelines say to manage risk. But what if the guidelines are the problem? In this episode of Dysphagia Research Bites, Dr Shaun O'Keeffe and I unpack his critique of the Royal College of Physicians' guidance on eating and drinking difficulties, and we ask the question that too few clinicians are asking: is our fear of aspiration actually driving good practice, or just driving restrict...

If you've ever felt uncertain about whether cervical auscultation belongs in your clinical toolkit, this episode is for you. In this episode of Dysphagia Research Bites, Chantelle sits down with Associate Professor Liza Bergstrom to unpack the evidence behind cervical auscultation, why it became so controversial, and why recent high-quality research suggests it deserves a proper place in your...

In this episode, Chantelle sits down with Tiffani Wallace, a dysphagia specialist with a passion for rehabilitation, to break down a 2016 case series study on the Intensive Dysphagia Rehabilitation Approach (IDRA) ™ in patients with neurogenic dysphagia. In this episode they cover: What the IDR approach actually involves and why it's more accessible than it sounds The three core components of...

In part 2, Chantelle continues her conversation with Jackie Rodriguez, SLP, picking up where they left off on the dual diagnosis of dysphagia and dementia. In this episode they cover: How dementia affects the visual field and what this can mean at mealtimes Practical approaches to assessing vision and how you can compensate for these impairments in your management approach Using sensory strategies...

Dysphagia & Dementia: What we need to learn & unlearn If you're a speech pathologist working with adults with dementia, you already know that dysphagia doesn't show up in isolation. It shows up alongside memory loss, behavioural & sensory changes, communication breakdowns and alongside an aging swallow. In part 1 of this episode of Dysphagia Research Bites, Chantelle sits down...

If you're a speech pathologist working in the community, you already know it feels different to the hospital. But did you know the research actually backs that up? In this episode of Dysphagia Research Bites, Chantelle sits down with Dr Simone Howells from Griffith University to unpack her research on community-based dysphagia practice and why the skills that made you great in the hospital mig...