A Prospective Observational Cohort Study to Evaluate and Predict Oropharyngeal Dysphagia (OD) Improvement in Hospitalized Patients with Alzheimer’s disease and related Dementias (AD/ADRD)

Oropharyngeal dysphagia (OD) is a common syndrome that affects hospitalized patients with Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD). Despite the potential for clinical OD improvement, no standard of care exists for OD reassessment prior to hospital discharge. This study will prospectively recruit hospitalized patients with AD/ADRD and OD. All patients will undergo a modified barium swallow study (MBSS) at initial assessment to confirm OD. If OD is confirmed, the patient will undergo another MBSS prior to hospital discharge. We will develop a curated dataset to train a machine learning model to predict clinical OD improvement prior to hospital discharge. We then will prospectively, silently validate the model to acquire real-time preliminary performance metrics, in preparation for a full-scale prospective validation. Additionally, we will determine the association between improvement in physiologic swallow impairment and clinical OD improvement.