Kids after heart surgery face serious feeding risks that doctors often miss. Nerve damage during surgery can paralyze vocal folds, causing silent aspiration. The 50% dysphagia rate commonly cited is probably too low.
I think that the the number 50% of children status post cardiac surgery having dysphagia or feeding difficulties, I feel like that's a conservative because from what I've seen, a lot of them do, and it can be from, you know, as serious as silent aspiration and that because, you know, and there's so much that goes into that cardiac and respiratory side and the aerodigestive side of it that I think it's really gotta be on our radar as clinicians because something that may not be on our radar but that any child that has had cardiac surgery is at risk for having that recurrent branch of the laryngeal nerve nicked during surgery. It's just right there wrapped around it. And so it just happens I see it a lot with the children that I work with. And then you get either a paralyzed vocal fold or weakness, which is going to affect swallowing and voicing.
What I Was Missing in Feeding Therapy: ARFID, Airway, and Myo with Samy Hernandez
