Ambulatory Monitoring of Swallowing in Healthy Adults During Daily Activities
4 affiliations
- 1Teaching and Research Logopedics, Clinic of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany
- 2Control Systems Group, Technische Universität Berlin, 10623 Berlin, Germany
- 3Clinic of Neurology, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany
- 4Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, Unfallkrankenhaus Berlin, Warener Str. 7, 12683 Berlin, Germany
Abstract
Background: How often healthy adults swallow during the day and at night, and how swallowing changes around meals, remains difficult to characterize under everyday conditions. This exploratory study quantified swallowing during planned 24 h ambulatory EMG-BI monitoring and examined the practicability of prolonged recording during usual daily routines. Methods: Combined surface electromyography and bioimpedance recordings were obtained during participants’ usual routines. Twenty-five recordings from adults aged 19–58 years were included; 21 were complete and four were incomplete. Participants documented intake and nighttime intervals. Automated swallow detections were manually reviewed and detection errors corrected. Reviewed events were assigned to activity periods, including meals and peri-meal windows. Bioimpedance changes were used to estimate the extent and rate of pharyngeal closure. Results: Among 21 complete recordings, the mean total was 1041 ± 300 swallows over 24 h. Mean swallowing frequencies were 0.78 ± 0.27/min in the non-intake reference category, 3.08 ± 0.86/min during meal periods, and 5.61 ± 3.57/h during documented nighttime intervals. Frequencies were significantly higher in the five minutes before and immediately after meals than in the reference category after Holm–Bonferroni correction. Meal periods also showed greater BI-derived extent and rate of pharyngeal closure. No sex comparison remained significant. Conclusions: Swallowing measures varied across reported daily activity periods in this small exploratory sample. These preliminary data support further ambulatory research.
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BibTeX
@article{paszkiet2026ambulatory,
title = {{Ambulatory Monitoring of Swallowing in Healthy Adults During Daily Activities}},
author = {Klara A. Paszkiet and Benjamin Riebold and Bruno Fimm and Rainer O. Seidl},
journal = {Journal of Clinical Medicine},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.3390/jcm15218692},
url = {https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/15/21/8692},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Ambulatory Monitoring of Swallowing in Healthy Adults During Daily Activities
AU - Klara A. Paszkiet
AU - Benjamin Riebold
AU - Bruno Fimm
AU - Rainer O. Seidl
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/07
JO - Journal of Clinical Medicine
DO - 10.3390/jcm15218692
UR - https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/15/21/8692
AB - Background: How often healthy adults swallow during the day and at night, and how swallowing changes around meals, remains difficult to characterize under everyday conditions. This exploratory study quantified swallowing during planned 24 h ambulatory EMG-BI monitoring and examined the practicability of prolonged recording during usual daily routines. Methods: Combined surface electromyography and bioimpedance recordings were obtained during participants’ usual routines. Twenty-five recordings from adults aged 19–58 years were included; 21 were complete and four were incomplete. Participants documented intake and nighttime intervals. Automated swallow detections were manually reviewed and detection errors corrected. Reviewed events were assigned to activity periods, including meals and peri-meal windows. Bioimpedance changes were used to estimate the extent and rate of pharyngeal closure. Results: Among 21 complete recordings, the mean total was 1041 ± 300 swallows over 24 h. Mean swallowing frequencies were 0.78 ± 0.27/min in the non-intake reference category, 3.08 ± 0.86/min during meal periods, and 5.61 ± 3.57/h during documented nighttime intervals. Frequencies were significantly higher in the five minutes before and immediately after meals than in the reference category after Holm–Bonferroni correction. Meal periods also showed greater BI-derived extent and rate of pharyngeal closure. No sex comparison remained significant. Conclusions: Swallowing measures varied across reported daily activity periods in this small exploratory sample. These preliminary data support further ambulatory research.
SN - 2077-0383
ER -