Therapeutic Approaches to Dysphagia Treatment in Parkinson Disease: A Review

Context: Dysphagia is one of the common symptoms observed in more than 80% of patients with Parkinson disease (PD). Dysphagia is a potentially harmful feature that leads to the reduction of the quality of life, malnutrition, and aspiration pneumonia, which is one of the main causes of death in patients with PD. The current study aimed at reviewing therapeutic approaches to dysphagia treatment in PD. Evidence Acquisition: MEDLINE literature through PubMed until 2017 was reviewed. Results: Studies on the dysphagia treatment approaches in PD are very diffuse. These studies include the conventional rehabilitation of dysphagia, as well as behavioral-instrumental and electrophysiological treatments. Despite the usefulness of these treatments, due to the poor quality of such studies, the generalization of their results is limited. Conclusions: It appears that a combination of treatments provides satisfactory results. Therefore, it is necessary to use new treatment methods in addition to the conventional treatments.