Researchers validated a technique using videofluoroscopic recordings to measure liquid infiltration and accumulation in the lungs.
RT’s Three Key Takeaways:
- Lung Monitoring Method: Researchers developed a quantitative greyscale analysis to track short-term and long-term effects of aspiration on lung appearance in an infant pig model.
- Reliable Detection: The technique successfully measured lung darkening associated with liquid infiltration during feeding and liquid accumulation over a five-day period.
- Clinical Factors: The study found a weak correlation between aspiration frequency and lung changes, suggesting additional factors influence the development of negative healthcare outcomes.
Researchers developed a method to track the short-term and long-term effects of aspiration on the appearance of the lungs using an infant pig model, according to a report published in Springer.
Existing scales used to detect the penetration and aspiration of material into the airway do not reliably predict pulmonary outcomes like pneumonia. The new method uses quantitative greyscale analyses to provide a more objective measure of lung health, according to the report.
The study involved six pigs that varied in the frequency and severity of aspiration. Researchers recorded the animals as they fed on barium milk over a two-week period, which is equivalent to one to nine months in humans. The team captured the entire airway using high-speed videofluoroscopic recordings at 125 frames per second.
Using dorsoventral views of the lungs, the researchers collected minimum and mean greyscale measurements to monitor two specific phenomena: liquid infiltration in the lungs during a single feed and liquid accumulation caused by repeated aspiration and inflammation over several days.
The measurements proved reliable within and across four raters, with an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.67 or higher. The study measured a significant darkening of the lungs due to the infiltration of liquid and the accumulation of liquid over five days.
Researchers also compared the lung greyscale results to swallow safety scores using the Infant Mammalian Penetration Aspiration Scale (IMPAS). The results showed that worsened lung greyscale was only weakly correlated with a high frequency of aspiration, with a Pearson’s correlation coefficient between -0.16 and -0.21.
These findings indicate that other factors likely play a role in the development of negative healthcare outcomes following aspiration. The researchers noted that these techniques could be used in future longitudinal studies to better understand the links between airway protection and lung health.
