• Peter K M Ku, Floyd Christopher Holsinger, Chan Jason Y K JYK https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9480-4637 Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Prince of Wales Hospital, The Chines, Zenon W C Yeung, Becky Y T Chan, Tong Michael C F MCF Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Prince of Wales Hospital, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong., and Heather M Starmer.
• Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, United Christian Hospital and Tseung Kwan O Hospital, Tseung Kwan O, Hong Kong.
• Head Neck. 2020 Jul 1; 42 (7): 1491-1496.

AbstractThe global pandemic of 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has tremendously altered routine medical service provision and imposed unprecedented challenges to the health care system. This impacts patients with dysphagia complications caused by head and neck cancers. As this pandemic of COVID-19 may last longer than severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, a practical workflow for managing dysphagia is crucial to ensure a safe and efficient practice to patients and health care personnel. This document provides clinical practice guidelines based on available evidence to date to balance the risks of SARS-CoV-2 exposure with the risks associated with dysphagia. Critical considerations include reserving instrumental assessments for urgent cases only, optimizing the noninstrumental swallowing evaluation, appropriate use of personal protective equipment (PPE), and use of telehealth when appropriate. Despite significant limitations in clinical service provision during the pandemic of COVID-19, a safe and reasonable dysphagia care pathway can still be implemented with modifications of setup and application of newer technologies.© 2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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