Dysphagia in Patients with the Post-Polio Syndrome

THE post-polio syndrome consists of a variety of musculoskeletal symptoms with muscular atrophy that create new difficulties with activities of daily living 25 to 30 years after the original attack of acute paralytic poliomyelitis. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Post-poliomyelitis muscular atrophy is characterized by slowly progressive weakness in muscles previously affected or, less often, in muscles seemingly spared during the original illness. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Although attention has focused primarily on new weakness affecting the limbs, symptoms involving the muscles of the oropharynx (i.e., the bulbar muscles) have been increasingly recognized in isolated case reports. 12 This complication is not unexpected because in acute paralytic poliomyelitis there is . . .