Impact of drug treatment on voice, speech, and swallowing in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: a systematic review

ABSTRACT

Purpose

To carry out a systematic review of the literature on the impact of drug treatment on the voice, speech, and swallowing functions of adult individuals with sporadic ALS, measured through scales and their respective scores, concerning the placebo group.

Research strategy

The search strategy was created based on the PICO strategy. The keywords were selected from a consultation with the health sciences descriptors – DECS and the medical subject headings – MeSH. Two independent researchers searched ASHA, Cochrane, Lilacs, Pubmed, Scopus and Web of Science, in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Selection criteria

Randomized clinical trials, carried out on adults, were included, and articles with outcomes related to selfassessment and quality of life, theses, dissertations, abstracts only , case studies, experimental studies, book chapters, encyclopedia and brief communication were excluded. The studies were evaluated using the Robins II and Grade tool.

Results

Of the 9824 articles found, 5 were selected for analysis and underwent drug intervention. It is noticed the absence of studies aimed at the rehabilitation of bulb functions. The quality of evidence generated varied from high to low risk and the level of evidence low and very low.

Conclusion

Most studies show a delay in the degeneration of bulbar functions in relation to placebo, although this finding has not been observed in the scores of scales that measure such functions. Studies are at risk of selection bias and very low/low methodological quality makes the findings questionable.

Keywords:
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; Motor neuron disease; Voice; Speech; Swallowing