Impact of Swallowing and Oral Care Interventions on Dysphagia, Dysphonia, and Oral Intake in Postendotracheal Extubation Patients

Background: Approximately 13–20 million critically ill patients are intubated in intensive care units (ICUs) globally each year. An early study estimated that up to 62% of these patients experience prolonged intubation. Notably, 87% of patients with postextubation dysphagia (PED) fail to recover by ICU discharge, and 64% continue to have swallowing disorders upon hospital discharge. Even 6 months later, 23% of PED patients still experience dysphagia. Aims: To determine the effectiveness of SOC interventions on the level of dysphagia, dysphonia, and oral intake among patients following endotracheal (ET) extubation. Methods and Material: Quasi quasi-experimental study design was chosen to conduct the study. The study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital. Fifty-eight ET extubated patients were selected using a nonprobability purposive sampling technique. The swallowing technique was practiced by the postextubated patients twice a day for 20 min duration. Oral care intervention was provided by the investigator twice a day for 10 min duration after the swallowing technique. The pretest on the level of dysphagia, dysphonia, and oral intake was assessed for 4–6 h after extubation. The posttest was assessed on the 3rd, 5th, and 7th days following ET extubation. Data was analyzed by using IBM SPSS Statistics for windows, Version 23 (Released 2017; IBM Corp., Armonk, New York, United States). Results: The study results exhibited that the comparison of dysphagia, dysphonia, and oral intake between control and study group patients was statistically significant with p = 0.000. Conclusions: Swallowing and oral care interventions were found to be effective in reducing dysphagia and dysphonia and improved oral intake among postextubated patients.