Molfenter Sonja M, Jones-Rastelli R Brynn, Barfield Arie, Cooks Drew, Crossman Claire, Jackson Kaiyn, Price D'manda, Robinson Journee C, Johnson Aaron M
Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, New York University, 665 Broadway, New York, NY, USA.
Department of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, NYU Langone Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA.
Dysphagia. 2025 Mar 27. doi: 10.1007/s00455-025-10826-2.
Dysphagia is a commonly occurring medical condition estimated to occur in between and 10% adults in the US. Despite this relatively high prevalence, the general population's understanding of this condition is currently unknown. Our aims were to (a) conduct a large-scale survey to determine the public's awareness and understanding of dysphagia in comparison to other three other health conditions and (b) compare this knowledge to relative prevalence rates of the conditions.
The survey was designed to measure four constructs of interest comparing dysphagia with insomnia, vertigo and ataxia. Constructs included: (1) Knowledge of the Condition, (2) Source of Knowledge, (3) Health Impact, (4) Treating Medical Professionals. The survey was launched via Qualtrics™ software and participants were recruited and paid using Prolific™. Descriptive statistics were used to compare participants knowledge of dysphagia with the other conditions. To obtain relative prevalence rates, Cosmos was used to quantify the number of Epic-based patient encounters with any ICD-10 code for each condition in 2023 and expressed as a percent of all patient encounters in the US in 2023.
2000 adults (n = 1030 female) aged 18-95 (median 49, IQR = 33-62) completed our survey. When asked, 'Do you know what ____ is'? participants expressed higher familiarity with insomnia (99%) and vertigo (87%) in comparison to dysphagia (25%) and ataxia (18%). From a list of 8 options, 99% and 94% participants selected the correct impairment for insomnia and vertigo respectively, compared with 44% correct for dysphagia and 22% for ataxia. Participants selected an appropriate healthcare provider for dysphagia 47% of the time compared with 74% for insomnia, 56% for vertigo and 36% for ataxia. When asked to identify up to 3 sequelae (from a list of 9), only 4% of participants were able to correctly identify all three for dysphagia, in comparison to 16% for ataxia, 27% for vertigo and 60% for insomnia. The Cosmos analysis revealed that while insomnia had the highest prevalence in 2023 (5.5% of patient encounters), dysphagia occurred much more frequently (2.4%) than vertigo (0.68%) and ataxia (0.24%).
These discrepancies highlight a notable gap in public awareness between dysphagia and more recognized conditions of insomnia and vertigo, even though the prevalence of dysphagia is higher than vertigo. Increasing public awareness of dysphagia is vital for early intervention, increasing quality of life, and advocating for equitable access to healthcare resources.
吞咽困难是一种常见的医学病症，据估计在美国10%的成年人中都会出现。尽管患病率相对较高，但目前公众对这种病症的了解程度尚不清楚。我们的目标是：（a）开展一项大规模调查，以确定公众对吞咽困难的认识和理解，并与其他三种健康状况进行比较；（b）将这种认知与这些病症的相对患病率进行比较。
该调查旨在测量四个感兴趣的指标，将吞咽困难与失眠、眩晕和共济失调进行比较。指标包括：（1）病症知识；（2）知识来源；（3）对健康的影响；（4）治疗的医疗专业人员。该调查通过Qualtrics™软件发起，参与者通过Prolific™招募并获得报酬。描述性统计用于比较参与者对吞咽困难与其他病症的了解。为了获得相对患病率，使用Cosmos量化了2023年基于Epic系统的每种病症的任何ICD - 10编码的患者就诊次数，并表示为2023年美国所有患者就诊次数的百分比。
2000名年龄在18 - 95岁（中位数49岁，四分位距 = 33 - 62岁）的成年人（n = 1030名女性）完成了我们的调查。当被问及“你知道什么是____吗？”时，与吞咽困难（25%）和共济失调（18%）相比，参与者对失眠（99%）和眩晕（87%）表现出更高的熟悉度。在8个选项的列表中，分别有99%和94%的参与者正确选择了失眠和眩晕的损伤情况，而吞咽困难的正确选择率为44%，共济失调为22%。参与者为吞咽困难选择合适医疗服务提供者的比例为47%，而失眠为74%，眩晕为56%，共济失调为36%。当被要求从9个选项中最多识别出3种后遗症时，只有4%的参与者能够正确识别出吞咽困难的所有三种后遗症，相比之下，共济失调为16%，眩晕为27%，失眠为60%。Cosmos分析显示，虽然失眠在2023年的患病率最高（占患者就诊次数的5.5%），但吞咽困难的发生频率（2.4%）远高于眩晕（0.68%）和共济失调（0.24%）。
这些差异凸显了公众对吞咽困难与更知名的失眠和眩晕病症之间认识上的显著差距，尽管吞咽困难的患病率高于眩晕。提高公众对吞咽困难的认识对于早期干预、提高生活质量以及倡导公平获取医疗资源至关重要。
