Many people have difficulty in swallowing medication when it is given to them as tablets or pills. Dysphagia or swallowing difficulties can affect people of all ages including young children although it is most usual in older people as they are more vulnerable to the causative illnesses and age connected changes in the functions of the saliva glands. Dysphagia is a particularly serious issue in care homes for the elderly where approximately 1/3 of residents might suffer from it which makes caring for them a far more complicated and time consuming process.
The problems Dysphagia brings about may be severe because it interferes with medicine management as well as medication management if the patient has got difficulties swallowing tablets . Furthermore there’s a threat that capsules ingested orally could cause choking or a blockage of the airway and there is also a danger that pills can become lodged in the throat which may result in the incorrect dispersal of the drug to the body and also possible damage to the oesophagus.
Up till now the most common method of managing the problems that Dysphagia presents has been tablet crushing to make treatments easier to swallow. However there are a number of issues associated with crushing tablets that can have severe implications and can have an effect on the efficacy of the medicine. Quite a few pills have a sugar coating on them to make them taste more pleasant and even though crushing them will not have any effect on the efficiency of the pill it may make them taste very unpleasant. Many of the pills and tablets manufactured these days have an enteric coating that is designed to keep the tablet together in the stomach. Tablets with an enteric coating must not be crushed because the covering is there either to protect the stomach from the medicine or to guard the medicine from the effects of the stomach .
Fortunately help is available for sufferers of Dysphagia and the people who take care of them. There is today a larger range than ever before of liquid medicines which can be used orally and have exactly the same effect as pills or tablets. Oral liquid medicine is created to treat an array of illnesses and diseases such as those affecting the cardio-vascular system and endocrine system and more liquid medicines are being created all the time. Liquid medicines have a number of advantages over other forms of medications not least of which is the fact they are much easier to take for people struggling with Dysphagia .