FEES vs. MBSS

Why choose our services over sending your residents to a hospital for a barium swallow study?

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• There is no need to transport the patient as our services are performed on site with your staff therapist. This provides the best of both worlds, someone who knows the patient as well as an expert in dysphagia diagnosis to discuss what works best for them individually.

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• We use real food not barium. This provides the ability to trial favored foods not present in MBSS as they must use barium to be visible during that study.

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• No radiation is used which means our studies can last as long as needed to evaluate the patient's function. This allows for thorough testing greater than the 5 minutes available with an MBSS.

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• We can work with your facility to schedule when the study takes place. Often, this can be faster than when a barium swallow can be scheduled as there are fewer moving parts to organize. All you need to do is call us, we schedule a time, and show up. All without needing transport to and from the hospital. This also reduces time patients are away from the site not getting the therapy they are there for in the first place. 

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• A common misconception with FEES is the belief it can not detect silent aspiration like an MBSS. However it definitely can, even with the white out period inherent in the study it just takes knowledge and positioning to capture.

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• The procedure is often cost saving in multiple ways: reduced transportation cost, no cost for radiology suite and on site radiologist and rad tech, and reducing the cost of having residents on unneeded thickened liquids. These can add up to an additional $3,000-$4,000 a year per patient. So not only can timely studies save facilities money, but improve patient quality of life by signaling a return to thin liquids.