Clinical efficacy of breath training on the rehabilitation of dysphagia in elderly stroke patients

Objective To investigate the clinical efficacy of breath training for dysphagia in elderly stroke patients. Methods Totally 70 hospitalized post-stroke elderly patients with dysphagia,from January,2012 to February,2015,were randomly assigned into control group (n=35) and experimental group (n=35).The control group was given conventional swallowing function rehabilitation training,while the experimental group was added with breath training.treatment was administrated once a day and 6 times a week for 4 weeks.Post-stroke dysphagia was assessed with Water swallow test and respiratory function was evaluated by forced vital capacity (FVC),forced expiratory volume in 1s (FEV1) and peak expiratory flow (PEF) before and after treatment. Results After treatment,swallowing function and lung function in both groups were improved compared with those before treatment (P<0.05),and the effective rate of experimental group was statistically higher than that in control group.Breathing function in experimental group was improved significantly after treatment (P<0.05),and the experimental group improved obviously higher compared with that in the control group (P<0.05). Conclusion Breath training combined with swallowing function rehabilitation training can significantly improve the respiratory function and swallowing disorder in elderly stroke patients with dysphagia,which suggests that this approach is worthy to be popularized in clinic for its validity and feasibility.