ABSTRACT
Introduction
Many of the symptoms presented by palliative patients culminate in dysphagia and communication disorders.
Purpose
To analyze the opinion of palliative care patients and their families and/or informal caregivers about the communication and swallowing difficulties.
Methods
Exploratory, observational, cross-sectional study with a sample of 38 patients and 26 family members and/or informal caregivers. Data collection was carried out in a central university hospital and a Local Health Unit in Portugal, through two different questionnaires.
Results
Data indicated that 55.3% of surveyed patients reported that they have difficulty in communicating and 34.2% signaled the “communicate with difficulty” option. In turn, 57.7% of families and/or informal caregivers refer this difficulty as primordial, and the highest percentage (30.8%) was also related to the option “communicate with difficulty”. The percentage of swallowing difficulties presented by the patient and referred to by family members and/or caregivers is high in both groups compared to communication difficulties. 68.5% of the patients surveyed refer difficulties to swallow liquids, while 71.1% mentioned difficulty in swallowing solid food. In the family and/or informal caregivers’ opinion, 80.8% of patients presented difficulty to swallow liquids and 84.6% difficulties in swallowing solids.
Conclusion
The majority of the patients in Palliative Care present communication and swallowing difficulties and the most prevalent difficulty is swallowing solid food.
Paliative care; Speech therapy; Speech; language and hearing sciences; Communication; Deglutition