• Takashi Shigematsu, Ichiro Fujishima, and Kikuo Ohno.
• Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Hamamatsu City Rehabilitation Hospital, Shizuoka, Japan. shige1206jp@gmail.com
• Neurorehabil Neural Repair. 2013 May 1; 27 (4): 363-9.

BackgroundPoststroke dysphagia can persist, leading to many complications.ObjectiveWe investigated whether noninvasive brain stimulation to the pharyngeal motor cortex combined with intensive swallowing therapy can improve dysphagia.MethodsA total of 20 patients who had dysphagia for at least 1 month after stroke were randomly assigned to receive 10 sessions lasting 20 minutes each of either 1-mA anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) or a sham procedure to the ipsilesional pharyngeal motor cortex, along with simultaneous conventional swallowing therapies. We evaluated swallowing function with the dysphagia outcome and severity scale (DOSS) before, immediately after, and 1 month after the last session.ResultsAnodal tDCS resulted in an improvement of 1.4 points in DOSS (P = .006) immediately after the last session and 2.8 points (P = .004) 1 month after the last session. The sham tDCS group improved 0.5 points (P = .059) after the last session and 1.2 points (P = .026) 1 month after the final session. The improvements in the anodal tDCS group were significantly greater than those in the sham tDCS group (P = .029 after the last session, and P = .007 1 month after the last session).ConclusionsAnodal tDCS to the ipsilesional hemisphere and simultaneous peripheral sensorimotor activities significantly improved swallowing function as assessed by the DOSS.

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