Background: the Videofluoroscopic Dysphagia Scale (VDS) is used to interpret and predict the long-term prognosis of patients with dysphagia. However, the inter-rater agreement of the VDS was shown to be lower in a previous study. To overcome the mentioned limitation of the VDS, a modified version (mVDS) was created and applied clinically. We aimed to validate its usefulness in determining the appropriate feeding method and predicting the prognosis of dysphagia.
Methods: the videofluroscopic swallowing study (VFSS) data of 50 patients with dysphagia were collected retrospectively. The VFSS data were evaluated using the mVDS, and the inter-rater reliability was calculated. We also evaluated the association between the mVDS and type of feeding method selected, and between the mVDS and presence of aspiration pneumonia in patients with dysphagia.
Results: among the different parameters of mVDS, "aspiration" showed the highest reliability (k = 0.767), followed by "mastication" and "lip closure" (k = 0.648 and k = 0.634, respectively). Conversely, "triggering pharyngeal swallow" and "pyriformis residue" demonstrated the lowest reliabilities (k = 0.312 and k = 0.324, respectively). The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), which is used as a measure of the reliability of the total mVDS score, was 0.876. In all patients with dysphagia, the mVDS score correlated significantly with the type of feeding method selected (p < 0.05), and the presence of aspiration pneumonia (p < 0.05).
Conclusion: the ICC of the total mVDS score was 0.876. Therefore, the mVDS could be a useful tool for quantifying the severity of dysphagia. It could be helpful in the analysis of the VFSS findings among patients with dysphagia in clinical settings and research.
Keywords: Deglutition; Deglutition disorders; Dysphagia; Inter-rater; Reliability; VDS; VFSS.