Chewing, Swallowing and Orofacial Motricity in Severe Obese

Background: Obesity is considered an epidemic disease of great repercussion on the world and its prevalence has increased in recent decades. The treatment of obesity aims to improve health and quality of life, by reducing body weight. The clinical approach to obesity is routinely the first line of treatment. Clinical treatment usually involves a combination of restriction of caloric intake, modification of behavior and habits, regular practice of physical activity and pharmacotherapy. Clinical treatment of obesity leads to considerable weight loss, but often not sustained in most patients. This long-term sustained weight loss is an attribute of bariatric surgery, since severe obesity remains largely refractory to dietary and drug therapy. Changes in lifestyle that occur in severely obese patients undergoing bariatric surgery, especially in terms of food, lead to the need for the contribution of speech therapy to adapt to the new way of ingesting food. Objectives: to analyze the stomatognathic functions of mastication and swallowing and to verify the effectiveness of orofacial motricity stimulation in adults, severely obese before and after bariatric surgery. Methods: This is a randomized, controlled clinical trial involving severely obese adult patients of both sexes referred for bariatric surgery. This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Centro Universitário Fundação Assis Gurgacz (FAG) in the city of Cascavel (PR), Brazil, protocol number CEP FAG no. 4,169,295. Patients will be consecutively recruited from the Bariatric Surgery Department of Hospital São Lucas (FAG) and referred to the Speech Therapy Clinic according to the eligibility criteria of the research protocol. After the initial assessment, patients will be randomly assigned to an intervention group (MOG) and a control group (COG). The COG and MOG groups will be evaluated before and after bariatric surgery. Only the GMO will be submitted to the speech therapy training program before