Dysphagia Exercises?

JamieNPCSurvivor

Hello I'm a 15 year survivor of NPC (Diagnosed when I was 14) I was unable to eat and swallow food for almost a year afterwards and ever since its been hard for me to swallow food. I have to take a drink after almost every bite of food to get it to go down. I plan on bringing it up again at my upcoming appointment, but just wondering if anyone has any dysphagia exercises that worked for them. There are so many I don't know which ones to try.

Thank you!

wbcgaruss

Hello Jamie and welcome to the CSN H&N forum. You don't say what treatments you had but one thing you may want to consider is to ask your doctor if dilations would help your situation. I was getting things stuck after my first cancer and treatment and I had 4 of them. You may still have to drink with your food if your saliva flow is really affected and low flow.

https://www.asge.org/home/for-patients/patient-information/understanding-eso-dilation-updated

But possibly though the first thing may be to have a swallow test so they can see where and what the problem is. That would be one of the options you can run by your doc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRvYL_TAtKI

I have had swallow tests and they have determined that my best swallow is with my head down and turned to the left. This would go through a speech therapist who handles everything such as speech, swallowing, talking, etc. They may also give you swallowing exercises to do I have done these different times following my treatments to help me strengthen my swallowing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZTXHwmOK6Q

Here is another swallowing exercise video, a little more personal covering swallowing exercises and posture--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERQarqgyfOA

If you can give us a little more information on your cancer, treatments, maybe where you got them such as a cancer center or local hospital, etc. Did you have surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, or a combination of treatments? What stage was your cancer and was it a squamous cell?

Maybe your doctor already knows what your problem is so check with him first and he can help you decide on tests and treatment. If you need dilations or just a check of the throat via an endoscopy it is done by a gastroenterologist and he has a flexible tube that he inserts to look at the area.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/endoscopy/about/pac-20395197

Welcome aboard, glad you found us and I hope something here helps you.

Wishing You the Best

Take Care God Bless-Russ

And don't forget

Never Ever Give Up (NEGU)