Browsing by Author "Ravihari, M.G.I."

Filter results by typing the first few letters
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Developing and pilot-testing an Oropharyngeal Dysphagia Screening Tool for children with cerebral palsy aged 4 – 6 years
    (Sri Lanka Medical Association, 2020) Hettiarachchi, S.; Ravihari, M.G.I.
    INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: Children with Cerebral Palsy (CP) demonstrate a variety of dysphagic symptoms. Speech and language therapists (SLTs) are mainly involved in the diagnosis and management of oropharyngeal dysphagia (OPD). Objectives were to develop a screening tool to detect OPD among children with CP aged 4 – 6 years, Pilot test the OPD screening tool with SLTs for children with CP aged between 4 – 6 years and to identify the test-retest reliability and inter-rater reliability of the developed screening tool. METHODS: The screening tool was developed based on the Dysphagia Disorder Survey (DDS) with the assistance of an expert panel of speech and language therapists (SLTs) and a pilot study. The study included 30 children with CP aged between 4;0 – 6;0 years. The OPD Screening Tool conduct together with expert SLTs to evaluate the inter-rater reliability and the study was conducted initially and 2 hours later by the researcher to evaluate test-retest reliability. RESULTS: The OPD Screening tool was shown to be reliable and applicable in detecting dysphagia amongst children with CP. The content validity was assessed by the five expert SLTs. The test-retest reliability and inter-rater reliability of the OPD Screening Tool was calculated and it was relatively high. CONCLUSION: The screening tool was shown to be a reliable tool and it was found to be a tool that easy administer in clinical setting to detect OPD in young children with CP.