Dysphagia Rehabilitation Using Digital Technology: A Scoping Review

Digital health technology in swallowing rehabilitation offers personalized exercises, remote monitoring, and real-time feedback, enhancing accessibility and effectiveness of therapy. This scoping review was conducted to summarize what types and features of digital technology-based dysphagia rehabilitation interventions exist, how they are applied in patients with dysphagia, and what the effectiveness and facilitators and barriers to intervention application are.

We searched Medline Complete, Embase, CINAHL, Scopus, and gray literature for articles published between January 2000 and June 2023. We used subheadings and terms related to digital health, dysphagia, and rehabilitation to search for articles. The included studies were mapped according to the types and features, effectiveness, enablers, barriers, and future improvements of swallowing rehabilitation using digital technologies.

Twenty-five studies met the inclusion criteria. Three types of digital swallowing rehabilitation interventions were identified: home-based rehabilitation using the mHealth app, synchronous telepractice and monitoring, as well as game-based biofeedback and tracking. The included studies reported positive results regarding physiological changes in swallowing function, swallowing performance, and quality of life. Digital unfamiliarity, resources for digital access, and technical issues related to the failure of the mobile device operating system were identified as barriers to the use of digital swallowing rehabilitation technology and future improvements.

Digital technology has potential value in dysphagia rehabilitation. In the future, developing various interventions utilizing the advantages of digital technology and conducting additional research to validate their effectiveness is necessary. Additionally, improved digital familiarity, better accessibility, better technology, and management practices will be needed.