Objective
Our study was designed to evaluate the clinical value of pulse oximetry for the detection of aspiration in a stroke patient with dysphagia at bedside.

Methods
Thirty two acute stroke patients with dysphagia were devided into two groups according to the presence or absence of aspiration. And controls was selected among the inpatients without a neurological disease and an evidence of dysphagia. We assessed the dysphagia by a neurological examination, fiberoptic examination of vocal cord and videofluoroscopic swallowing study(VFSS). And the oxygen saturation of tissue blood flow(SpO₂) was measured, while VFSS was performed by swallowing the barium sulfate fluid for three times.

Results
The clinical findings of dysphagia were not exactly correlated with the VFSS. There was no significant difference of the resting SpO₂ among three groups, but the mean SpO₂ fell more in the patients with aspirations(⁣2.73%) than in the controls(⁣0.11%) or the patients without aspirations(⁣0.33%). Mean SpO₂ fell more in the patients with aspiration of larger amount, but the change of SpO₂ was not statistically significant.

Conclusions
We conclude that the pulse oximetric measurement of SpO₂ is useful as a screening test for the assessment of aspiration and the efficacy of swallowing training.