Respiratory-Swallow Training Methods: Accuracy of Automated Detection of Swallow Onset, Respiratory Phase, Lung Volume at Swallow Onset, and Real-Time Performance Feedback Tested in Healthy Adults.

Background Preliminary studies have shown that respiratory-swallow training (RST) is a successful treatment for oropharyngeal head and neck cancer patients with refractory dysphagia. Refining the RST protocol with automated analysis software to provide real-time performance feedback has the potential to improve accessibility, reproducibility, and translation to diverse clinical settings. Method An automated software program for data acquisition and analysis developed to detect swallows, determine respiratory phase, calculate lung volume at the onset of the swallow, and provide real-time performance feedback was tested for feasibility in a small cohort of healthy adults. Outcome Measures Percent difference in swallow detection and accuracy of real-time performance feedback of respiratory phase and lung volume at swallowing onset between the automated software and the manual gold standard method were determined. Results The automated software program accurately detected the onset of the swallow on 91% of the swallows completed during the training trials. Feedback of respiratory phase and lung volume was accurate on 94% of the trials in which the swallow was accurately detected. Conclusions This novel, automated, and real-time RST software successfully detected the onset of the swallow, respiratory phase, and lung volume at swallow onset and provided appropriate real-time performance feedback with a high degree of accuracy in healthy adults. The software has the potential to improve the accessibility, efficiency, and translation of RST to diverse patient populations.