Quality of life in swallowing of the elderly patients affected by stroke

ABSTRACT BACKGROUND The elderly population faces many difficulties as a result of the aging process. Conceptualize and evaluate their life quality is a challenge, being hard to characterize the impact on daily activities and on functional capacity. The stroke is one of the most disabling neurological diseases, becoming a public health problem. As an aggravating result, there is dysphagia, a disorder that compromises the progression of the food from the mouth to the stomach, causing clinical complications to the individual. OBJECTIVE Characterize the life quality of the elderly swallowing affected by stroke. METHODS Cross-sectional study conducted at the University Hospital, attended by 35 elderly with stroke, being 19 women and 16 men, with age between 60 and 90 years old, that self-reported satisfactory overall clinical picture. It was applied the Quality of Life Swallowing protocol. The data were statistically analyzed, by means of ANOVA tests, Spearman correlation, t test, with significance level of 5%. RESULTS The mean age was 69.5 years; as for the scores obtained by the 35 participants in the 11 domains of the protocol, it was observed a change in score indicating severe to moderate impact in quality of life related to self-reported swallowing (31.8% to 59.5%); the domain that most interfered was the feeding time (31.8%). CONCLUSION Elderly affected by stroke that present dysphagia has low scores in quality of life related to swallowing

Content and layout development and validation of a vocal health guide for older adults

ABSTRACT Purpose: to develop and validate the content and layout of an educational guide on promoting vocal health of older adults. Methods: a methodological study, conducted in two stages: 1 - Development of the guide as an educative technology; 2 - Qualification of the educative material with validation of the guide’s content, layout and suitability by 13 judges (speech-language-hearing pathologists) and legitimization of the educative material by the target population, 9 older adults. The validation of the guide by the judges and older adults was based on the content validity index. Results: the aspects of objectivity, structure, presentation and relevance of the content were considered pertinent by the judges with an approximate score average of 0.92. However, some words were substituted or removed to bring more clarity to the reader, without loss to the overall message, in addition to the suggestions that were accepted for the final version. The older adults returned a positive assessment. Conclusion: the educative guide was validated regarding the aspects of content, layout and suitability for the vocal health promotion of older adults. Their knowledge of voice health is expected to promote the quality of life and benefit active and healthy aging