Soft matter physics of swallowing and its application to clinical management of dysphagia

Millions of people worldwide suffer from dysphagia or eating, drinking, and swallowing (EDS) difficulties, due to a variety of clinical reasons. Those most severely affected face an increased risk of choking, pneumonia, and respiratory infections. In the absence of a detailed, scientific understanding of the fluid mechanics of eating, drinking, and swallowing, current clinical intervention relies almost exclusively on advising patients to use “food thickeners” to modify the texture of what they ingest. Such modification is almost universally disliked by users, potentially leading to dehydration and undernourishment.

We propose a multidisciplinary PhD studentship project bringing together soft matter physicists, consumer experience experts, and clinicians to tackle this problem. In this project, the student will develop fundamental understanding of how various drinks are swallowed and investigate how this process depends on their various physical parameters. We foresee that towards the end of the project, the student will then deploy this understanding to practitioners and work with industry to recommend and manage the use of existing texture modifiers in food and drinks. Finally, this project may underpin new guidelines for the use of fluid texture modifiers.

It is a multi-institutional effort led by the University of Edinburgh, in partnership with Queen Margaret University and NHS Lothian.