How Dietitians Can Help Older Adults With Dysphagia

Dysphagia is a swallowing disorder that makes routine activities like eating and drinking difficult and sometimes hazardous. Common among older adults, dysphagia prevents the patients from engaging actively in social interactions and eating or drinking, affecting their quality of life.

Understanding how to manage this illness can help older adults implement different interventions to live better. This article explores how dysphagia patients benefit from professional dietary support.

Making Nutritional Assessment

First, dietitians design personalized care plans for dysphagia patients, depending on their nutritional and swallowing needs. For instance, they might advise patients to use SimplyThick nectar to thicken their liquids, making them easy to swallow. These experts evaluate the patient’s nutritional status to recognize any deficiencies the older adults might develop.

Dietitians collaborate with speech-language pathologists to gauge the individual’s swallowing capabilities during the nutritional assessments. They also evaluate patient’s eating preferences and habits to ensure they recommend meals that match their cultural food choices.

Modifying Dietary Plans

As dysphagia advances, swallowing regular food increases the risk of aspiration pneumonia and poor vocal quality or even leads to hospitalization. Dietitians help to protect patients from these negative consequences by offering modified diet plans to ensure they eat healthy and enjoy their food and drinks.

Some common recommendations during this process include using specialized thickeners, such as to improve safety while swallowing. Thick liquids move smoothly down the throat without entering the patient’s esophagus and lungs or blocking their airway. This process also gives the brain more time to initiate the process of safe swallowing.

Another benefit of thickening liquids is that it does not change the taste of the liquid. It means that dysphagia patients can still enjoy their favorite drinks while still ensuring safety.

Professional dietitians indicate that any drink, including water and beverages, can be thickened. The caregivers can also thicken them to different levels, such as mildly thick to resemble eggnog, moderately thick to resemble liquid honey, and extremely thick to look like pudding.

Dietitians also advise dysphagia patients to make texture adjustments, such as mincing or softening their foods. In addition to being soft and moist, pieces of food should not exceed half a centimeter. However, buttered toast, oatmeal, and soft bread are safe to eat in their original form.

In some cases, the experts instruct older adults to avoid certain foods and drinks like chewy meat, raw vegetables, and hard nuts altogether. Since they can only take smaller portions, consuming high-calorie foods helps these individuals combat weight loss.

Facilitating Collaborative Care

Dietitians can collaborate with other professionals to enable dysphagia patients to have a better quality of life. For instance, they work with speech-language pathologists to assess the patients’ needs and offer swallowing therapy.

Dietitians collaborate with physicians to assess and resolve the underlying causes of dysphagia. Research indicates that older adults are at a higher risk of developing dysphagia due to chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and dementia.

Age also causes changes in muscle reflexes, affecting these individuals’ capacity to swallow safely. Understanding the specific cause of the illness enables dietitians and physicians to recommend safe interventions. Dietitians also educate dysphagia patients’ friends, family, and caregivers on meal preparation and feeding techniques.

That said, dysphagia patients can benefit significantly from professional dietary support. The nutritional assessment, dietary recommendations, and collaborative care with other experts ensure safety and proper nutrition. Healthy meals and appropriate routine improves their quality of life.