Abstract
The purpose of this article is to present a review of the literature on maneuvers utilized in the rehabilitation of dysphagia cases. The increase in the elderly population is causing greater prevalence of neurological diseases that progress with a condition of dysphagia, which reinforces the need for studies on this subject. This trend has drawn the attention of rehabilitation professionals, especially speech therapists. Among rehabilitation techniques, there are facilitating and postural maneuvers that may provide greater safety while eating. From the literature, it can be seen that supraglottal, super-supraglottal and effortful facilitating maneuvers help to protect the airways through comfortable apnea control techniques, and it is stated that these have the purpose of ensuring eating safety for dysphagic patients. Postural maneuvers of lowered head, tilted-back head, head rotation to the affected side and head inclined to the good side have been shown to have the purposes of closing the laryngeal vestibule, reducing the hyolaryngeal distance and enabling gravitational drainage of food towards the pharynx. Therefore, studying the dynamics of deglutition by means of the videofluoroscopy method and knowledge among professionals of the different maneuvers and their clinical complications have been shown to be important for the rehabilitation of dysphagic elderly patients.
dysphagia; deglutation disorders; swalling techniques; supraglottic swallow; efforfull swallow; chin tuck; stroke