Objective: Our study was designed to evaluate the clinical value of pulse oximetry for the detection of aspiration in a stroke patient with dysphagia at bedside.

Methods: Thirty two acute stroke patients with dysphagia were devided into two groups according to the presence or absence of aspiration. And controls was selected among the inpatients without a neurological disease and an evidence of dysphagia. We assessed the dysphagia by a neurological examination, fiberoptic examination of vocal cord and videofluoroscopic swallowing study(VFSS). And the oxygen saturation of tissue blood flow(SpO₂) was measured, while VFSS was performed by swallowing the barium sulfate fluid for three times.

Results: The clinical findings of dysphagia were not exactly correlated with the VFSS. There was no significant difference of the resting SpO₂ among three groups, but the mean SpO₂ fell more in the patients with aspirations(⁣2.73%) than in the controls(⁣0.11%) or the patients without aspirations(⁣0.33%). Mean SpO₂ fell more in the patients with aspiration of larger amount, but the change of SpO₂ was not statistically significant.

Conclusions: We conclude that the pulse oximetric measurement of SpO₂ is useful as a screening test for the assessment of aspiration and the efficacy of swallowing training.

Keywords :Stroke, Dysphagia, Aspiration, Pulse oximetry, Videofluoroscopy