ESSD Commentary on Dysphagia Management During COVID Pandemia

Since the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 pandemic a Global Public Health Emergency, experts in swallowing are seeking guidance on service delivery and clinical procedures. The European Society for Swallowing Disorders provides considerations to support experts in swallowing disorders in clinical practice. During the COVID-19 pandemic, assessment and treatment of patients with oropharyngeal dysphagia should be provided, while at the same time balancing risk of oropharyngeal complications with that of infection of patients and healthcare professionals involved in their management. Elective, non-urgent assessment may be temporarily postponed and patients are triaged to decide whether dysphagia assessment is necessary; instrumental assessment of swallowing is performed only if processing of the instruments can be guaranteed and clinical assessment has not provided enough diagnostic information for treatment prescription. Assessment and management of oropharyngeal dysphagia is a high-risk situation as it must be considered an aerosol-generating procedure. Personal protective equipment (PPE) should be used. Telepractice is encouraged and compensatory treatments are recommended

ESSD Commentary on Dysphagia Management During COVID Pandemia

Since the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 pandemic a Global Public Health Emergency, experts in swallowing are seeking guidance on service delivery and clinical procedures. The European Society for Swallowing Disorders provides considerations to support experts in swallowing disorders in clinical practice. During the COVID-19 pandemic, assessment and treatment of patients with oropharyngeal dysphagia should be provided, while at the same time balancing risk of oropharyngeal complications with that of infection of patients and healthcare professionals involved in their management. Elective, non-urgent assessment may be temporarily postponed and patients are triaged to decide whether dysphagia assessment is necessary; instrumental assessment of swallowing is performed only if processing of the instruments can be guaranteed and clinical assessment has not provided enough diagnostic information for treatment prescription. Assessment and management of oropharyngeal dysphagia is a high-risk situation as it must be considered an aerosol-generating procedure. Personal protective equipment (PPE) should be used. Telepractice is encouraged and compensatory treatments are recommended

Role of olivary electrical coupling in cerebellar motor learning

The level of electrotonic coupling in the inferior olive is extremely high, but its functional role in cerebellar motor control remains elusive. Here, we subjected mice that lack olivary coupling to paradigms that require learning-depend ent timing. Cx36-deficient mice showed impaired timing of both locomotion and eye-blink responses that were conditioned to a tone. The latencies of their olivary spike activities in response to the unconditioned stimulus were significantly more variable than those in wild-types. Whole-cell recordings of olivary neurons in vivo showed that these differences in spike timing result at least in part from altered interactions with their subthreshold oscillations. These results, combined with analyses of olivary activities in computer simulations at both the cellular and systems level, suggest that electrotonic coupling among olivary neurons by gap junctions is essential for proper timing of their action potentials and thereby for learning-dependent timing in cerebellar motor control