Schindler et Al. paper (1) was an excellent review of the Eating Assessment Tool–10 (EAT-10); one point, however, deserves attention; in the paper dysphagia is frequently considered as a synonym of oropharingeal dysphagia (OD); for example when significant features of EAT-10 are discussed it is said:”…EAT-10 could provide a stardardized way of reporting and identifying the prevalence of OD”. This statement is not accurate; the original paper by Belafski PC (2) explicitly states that “[EAT-10] is not limited to oropharingeal dysphagia or head and neck cancer patients”. So we can't ask EAT-10 to be a tool for something other than it was designed for; infact EAT-10 was not conceived to diagnose OD, but it is rather a valuable tool for screening people at risk of dysphagia “in general” or an even more useful way to a proper follow up of people almost diagnosed as affected by dysphagia (3).
Conflict of interests:
none to declare.
References
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