Tongue pressure and submental surface electromyography measures during noneffortful and effortful saliva swallows in healthy women.

PURPOSE: The effortful swallow, a compensatory technique frequently employed by speech-language pathologists for their patients with dysphagia, is still not fully understood in terms of how it modifies the swallow. In particular, although age-related changes are known to reduce maximum isometric tongue pressure, it is not known whether age affects people's ability to perform the effortful swallow. In this study, differences were explored between younger and older healthy women in execution of the effortful swallowing maneuver through a comparative analysis of effortful and noneffortful swallows.
METHOD: Eighty healthy women (40 age 18-35 years and 40 age 60 and older) participated. Peak amplitude measures and the timing of signal onset to peak were measured using concurrent tongue pressure and submental surface electromyography. Result Statistically significant main effects of age group were not observed in the amplitude data, but older participants showed slower rise times to peak anterior tongue-palate pressure.
CONCLUSIONS: Despite the general age-related deterioration of the swallowing musculature due to the phenomenon of sarcopenia, older women can still produce noneffortful and effortful swallows with lingual pressure and submental surface electromyography amplitudes similar to younger women.