By Locals hospitals invest in equipment for swallowing difficulties
Hospitals with the Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust (NLaG) have invested £95,000 into specialist equipment to help diagnose and treat patients with swallowing difficulties.
Hospitals under the trust include Grimsby’s Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital, Scunthorpe General Hospital and the Goole and District Hospital.
Their Speech and Language Therapy (SLT) Teams can now use the Fibreoptic Endoscopic Evaluation of Swallowing (FEES) to assess their patients within the ward instead of moving them to another room for an X-ray.
FEES is portable, saves time and ensures that patients are as comfortable as possible during their stay.
It will also ‘reduce pressure on [their] videofluoroscopy service’.
It will mainly be used within their Grimsby and Scunthorpe locations, but it can also be transported to their Goole hospital at the Neuro Rehab Centre.
Sarah Scrace, Operational Lead for SLT, told NLaG: “For those patients who need it, this equipment will give us a better understanding of the cause of their swallowing difficulties and how we can treat it.
“With it being portable, it will allow us to carry out assessments more quickly, meaning we can provide patients and the staff looking after them with information on how best to manage their difficulties, including rehabilitation options, sooner.
“We expect to see improved outcomes for patients in terms of their rehabilitation.”
The new equipment will be able to treat conditions such as strokes, Parkinson’s Disease and cancer.
Treatments include therapy to improve swallowing, changes to diet (consistencies of food and drink) or feeding tubes.
FEES should be in use in 2022.
(Images: Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust)
