الفهرس 
ETIOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION AND DIAGNOSIS OF DYSPHAGIAOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
D
ysphagia, the difficulty or inability to swallow, results from any abnormality affecting the structures or functions of normal deglutition. Oropharyngeal dysphagia describes the difficulty to start a swallow in one of the 3 phases; the oral preparatory, oral voluntary and the pharyngeal phases. Oropharyngeal dysphagia might be caused by morphological and structural changes such as tumours or inflammation, secondary to neurological diseases or the result of aging.
Questionnaires are increasingly used and represent ideal tools that are non-invasive and time-efficient assessments, cost-effective, easy to interpret and accurate.
Self-evaluation questionnaires, initially validated in English need to be translated and re-validated in different languages in order to be administered to an increased number of patients across the globe.
The aim of this study is to translate and adapt an Arabic version of the Sydney Swallow Questionnaire (A-SSQ) and to evaluate its validity, consistency, and reliability in the Arabic speaking population with oropharyngeal dysphagia in order to obtain a reliable Arabic tool that can be applied to measure the subjective severity of oropharyngeal dysphagia clearly by addressing all the possible symptoms of oropharyngeal dysphagia and the related problems to all the possible food consistencies.
At the end of the study, we found that:
I. The A-SSQ can differentiate between cases and healthy controls so it can assess oropharyngeal dysphagia.
II. The cut off value for the total score of the A-SSQ is ≥ 212.5
III. The A-SSQ is highly correlated with the A-EAT-10
IV. The A-SSQ is valid with excellent internal consistency and excellent reliability.
CONCLUSION
I
t is obvious that the strong internal consistency of the A-SSQ items along with the high significant correlation found between the items and the total score confirm the reliability of this instrument. Thus the tool is found to be reliable and valid to be used to screen and measure the subjective severity of oropharyngeal dysphagia that can be used to assess dysphagia in the Arabic speaking population as regard the symptoms related to anatomic region, type of dysfunction and consistency of the food bolus.
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Application of the A-SSQ is to be followed by objective methods in suspected cases.
2. Compare the A-SSQ results to FEES and VFS findings.