Effect of Pre-emptive Transcutaneous Neuro-muscular Electrical Stimulation for Dysphagia in Long Term Intubated Patients

It was well known that long term intubation caused a various kind of abnormal presentations of dysphagia such as the increased aspiration risk, the decreased gag reflex, mucosal pathology, the airway stenosis and so on. It was thought that the freezing and impaired proprioception to be developed as a result of dis-use around the pharynx and the larynx while intubation was one of the reason. Preemptive swallowing manual stimulation applied on the oral cavity to avoid the vicious cycle of dis-use was reported to improve dysphagia after extubation. Neuromuscular electrical stimulation have been utilized for a wide variety of dysphagia of multiple causes of neuro-muscular disorder. Supposing that preemptive transcutaneous neuromuscular electrical stimulation to be delivered to the muscles of being involved in swallowing could decrease the degree of dis-use during intubation so that it could reduce the occurence and severity of dysphagia developed after extubation, the investigators plan to perform randomized prospective double blind placebo controlled clinical interventional study.