Pediatric Dysphagia: The 10th Anniversary Issue

ABSTRACT Over the past decade, speech-language pathologists (SLPs) have increased their involvement in the assessment and management of infants and children with complex feeding and swallowing problems. Given the complex problems demonstrated by these infants and children that vary across a range of conditions and degrees of severity, SLPs need to increase their knowledge in all the topics covered in this issue. This article will discuss the current state of evidence-based decision making, levels of evidence for studies of treatment efficacy, ethical principles in evidencebased decision making, and ethical decision-making considerations with feeding and swallowing issues using examples of three types of populations of infants and children with complex feeding and swallowing problems. KEYWORDS: Dysphagia, deglutition, evidence-based, bioethics, pediatric Learning Outcomes: As a result of this activity, the reader will be able to (1) describe ethical principles and their relationship to feeding and swallowing issues in infants and young children, (2) state three rules of ethics related to clinical intervention with infants and children with complex dysphagia, and (3) describe the three components of an evidence-based clinical approach to the care of infants and young children with feeding and swallowing problems. Over the past decade, speech-language pathologists (SLPs) have increasingly found themselves involved in assessment and management of infants and children with feeding and swallowing problems. These infants and children demonstrate complex problems that vary over a wide range of conditions and degrees of severity. Feeding issues frequently are at the forefront o