Introduction/Objectives:

Chorea Huntington (HD) is a neurodegenerative genetic disorder with psychiatric symptoms. The most patients die because of aspiration pneumonia which is the follow of dysphagia.

Participants, Materials/Methods:

In our study we want to investigate the qualitative and temporal course of dysphagia in HD patients.

It is a prospective cohort study. Two blind clinical investigators evaluate the deglutition with an ordinal scale. The investigator divides the deglutition in an oral, pharyngeal and oesophageal part. For HD staging we use the Shoulson's clinical stages. For statistic analysis we use the Spearman SPSS.

Results:

We found a significant correlation between stage of illness and the whole oral phase of deglutition and between bolus passages of oesophageal phase. There is a correlation between days of illness and the oral phase and penetration of pharyngeal phase of deglutition.

Conclusions:

In future it will be important that HD patients get a speech therapy .Deglutition has a high protective factor for neurological disorders. Because of the early dysfunction in the oral phase malnutrition is a big problem for HD patients.