The Dysphagia Disorder Survey

“You don’t just have to be this strong clinician who intuitively says this kid has a problem or that this is an area of concern. [The DDS indicates] that this child is not doing what a 12 month old should be doing, this is why, and it gives you some potential direction for intervention.” - Lisa Goffman, PhD, CCC-SLP

"We are still using the tool and it is undoubtedly the best dysphagia assessment instrument for our population!"

"I was trained by Joan many years ago now, and still use the DDS to this day because of its logical and wholistic approach to the assessment and goal formulation for each client with whom we work."

The Dysphagia Disorder Survey is a rapid and cost effective assessment for professional and caretaker use in residential an day treatment sites, homes, and schools.

Sheppard Dysphagia Resource now offers an e-learning certification training for use of The Dysphagia Disorder Survey and the Dysphagia Management Staging Scale for facilities, agencies, and individual professionals.

The Dysphagia Disorder Survey (DDS) and The Dysphagia Management Staging Scale (DMSS) are standardized screening and clinical evaluations for eating and swallowing disorders in children and adults with developmental disabilities. The DDS and DMSS were developed by Dr. Joan Sheppard to provide cost-effective and efficient clinical identification of dysphagia and other eating and swallowing disorders, to track changes in these disorders and to help determine the necessity for clinical, medical, and instrumental dysphagia evaluations. These tools have been in use since 1986 for research and clinical management. They are currently used in the United States, The Netherlands, Australia, India, China, Brazil, New Zealand and Canada. The DDS is useful in residential and day treatment sites, homes and schools.

The DDS can be administered in as little as 10 minutes.

The DDS is appropriate for use for ages two through adulthood and in independent research has been standardized for children 18-24 months.

The DDS can be used by Speech Language Pathologists, Occupational Therapists, Physical Therapists, Dietitians, Nurses, and other licensed professionals trained in clinical observation and scoring percentiles.

The DDS is a task analysis tool that examines ability and disorder and provides raw and standardized scores. The DDS allows disorders to be tracked over time using numerical measures of performance. This facilitates assessment-re-assessment comparisons, comparisons between individuals and between groups of individuals.

The DDS is used in conjunction with the DMSS, a five-level scale for rating severity of involvement for eating and swallowing disorder based on management needs and health related outcomes. The DMSS provides increased flexibility in scoring.

The DDS provides a common terminology for interdisciplinary clinical and research collaborations.

The DDS is a validated tool and has been used in peer reviewed, published research studies involving children and adults. It has been standardized on over 800 children and adults with developmental disabilities.

Use of the DDS and DMSS as standardized, integrated testing components is available only through certification training.

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