Your Child's Eating And Drinking

Your child may have some trouble swallowing food and drink safely. This is called dysphagia. It can cause something your child eats or drinks to enter their airway or lungs, which we call aspiration. Aspiration can cause coughing and choking. It also puts your child at risk for a lung infection known as aspiration pneumonia.

A speech-language pathologist (SLP) will assess your child’s swallowing skills to learn more using these evaluations:

• Clinical feeding and swallowing evaluation (CSE). During the CSE, an SLP will watch your child eating and drinking and suggest next steps.

Sometimes more evaluations are recommended. These might include:

• A video fluoroscopic swallowing study (VFSS). In a VFSS, an SLP will work with your child to get an X-ray “movie” of their throat while they eat and drink.
• A fiber optic endoscopic evaluation of the swallow (FEES) study. This is done with an ear, nose and throat (ENT) doctor and an SLP. It involves putting a small tube with a camera (scope) through your child’s nose to the back of their throat, so we can watch their structures and muscle function while they swallow.

We will use the information gathered about your child’s swallowing skills to find out what needs to be done to keep your child eating safely. Sometimes, changing the texture of food or thickness of liquid will make it easier for your child to swallow. The SLP will decide whether your child needs any changes to their foods and liquids. Sometimes, precautions or techniques can also be used to lower the risk of aspiration. The SLP will teach you and your child these precautions and techniques.

If your child needs special utensils or help bringing food to their mouth, an occupational therapist (OT) will assess their feeding skills and make recommendations.

If your child cannot eat or drink anything safely by mouth, they may need to be fed through a tube while they get better. This tube could run from their nose to their stomach (NG-tube) or through their stomach wall (G-tube). The SLP will monitor your child’s swallowing skills and let you and the Rehab team know when it is safe for your child to eat and drink by mouth.