Quantitative approach to analyze hyoid bone movement during swallowing by ultrasound: an integrative review

To synthesize the scientific knowledge on which measurements of hyoid bone movement during swallowing are obtained by ultrasonography and how to extract these measures.

The PECO question and combinations of descriptors and keywords were formulated in the electronic databases Medline/PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, Scopus and Lilacs.

Articles that used ultrasonography to analyze measurements of hyoid bone movement during swallowing were included, regardless of language, year of publication, or presence of deglutition disorders.

The included articles were analyzed for: year, study site, study design, population, sample size, equipment used, transducer positioning, measurements obtained, method of extraction, and reliability of measurements.

Twenty-six articles met the eligibility criteria. The most frequent measurement was hyoid movement maximum amplitude, followed by time and velocity. There was great variability in the study population, equipment used, positioning of the transducer and method of extraction of the measurements. Thus, it was not possible to find a standard model to extract the measures. The level of reliability was investigated in only eight articles.

Amplitude, time and velocity are the measures of hyoid bone movement during swallowing that can be obtained by ultrasonography. There is no standardization on how to extract these measurements.