Research progress on rehabilitation programs for dysphagia in patients with ischemic stroke: A Narrative review

This review aims to explore the various symptoms caused by ischemic stroke and summarize current clinical care and rehabilitation treatment options for post-stroke dysphagia. Stroke is the second leading cause of death and a leading cause of long-term disability worldwide, with the highest prevalence in developing countries. Among them, ischemic stroke is the most common type, accounting for more than 80% of the total number of strokes and is the focus of current stroke research. More than one-third of ischemic stroke patients will be affected by post-stroke functional impairments, including but not limited to claudication, upper limb dysfunction, visual impairment, swallowing dysfunction, etc. Swallowing disorders refer to symptoms such as pain, weakness in chewing, prolonged swallowing time, choking when eating or drinking, and coughing due to abnormal function of the swallowing center and motor-sensory pathways and reduced control of the oral and throat muscles. Severe dysphagia will not only affect the patient's nutritional intake and cause malnutrition, but may also cause serious complications such as dehydration, aspiration pneumonia, and suffocation, leading to poor prognosis and even death. Therefore, the care and rehabilitation treatment of such patients have important clinical significance. The treatment strategies integrated in this review provide a variety of approaches for the rehabilitation of patients with post-stroke dysphagia, emphasizing the importance of personalized medicine and the necessity of multidisciplinary collaboration. Future studies should establish standardized research designs and evaluation indicators to improve the reproducibility of the research and the reliability of the results, hoping to provide more references for the treatment of swallowing dysfunction and the improvement of subsequent clinical care programs.