PURPOSE: to evaluate the alimentary consistency and the deglutition time in children with Cerebral Palsy. METHODS: 30 children between 0 and 12 years, with Cerebral Paralysis of the quadriplegic spastic type been evaluated, that were under speech pathology follow-up. RESULTS: the collected data showed that the verbal phase demonstrated to be inefficient or absent in the majority of the children, as well as in the pharyngeal phase of deglutition. More of the half of the evaluated children have shown between moderate to acute verbal motor dysfunction. In relation to the consistency of food and deglutition times, the children with deeply compromised OMF (Oral Motor Function) took more 14.2 times to swallow liquid foods and more 6.4 times for the pasty food. CONCLUSION: before the study, it is possible to conclude that the major difficulty of the child with cerebral paralysis is the verbal phase of deglutition and as bigger the verbal motor dysfunction, the bigger is the time elapsing for swallowing foods in the three studied consistencies. The relations between OMD (Oral Motor Dysfunction) and deglutition time are directly related.
Deglutition; Cerebral Palsy; Feeding
