IOPI Medical Q1 Newsletter- DRS 2021 & We Won An Award!

From the entire IOPI Medical family, we wish you a Happy New Year! This quarter we have information on events, 2021 pricing, helpful resources, articles, as well as Parkinson’s Disease specific research. You can also follow us on Twitter (@iopimedical) & Facebook (IOPI Medical LLC) for the latest news and information.

Don’t forget to visit our always evolving website. We are continuing to make improvements, giving you the opportunity to interact with our IOPI staff, Patient Advocacy tools, and Covid-19 resources. Visit our homepage by clicking the button below!

REMINDER! Every year the cost of manufacturing our products increases, which unfortunately means the prices of our products must also increase. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have decided to continue to freeze our prices. We are unsure how long we will be able to keep current pricing but will do so for as long as it is financially viable.

We’ve been working very hard to support our customers in any way we can, from our webinars to our advocacy tools, and we’re hoping that absorbing these additional costs will be another way to support you in the care of your patients during these trying times.

This freeze on pricing includes the previous price change of extended warranties, which cut the costs in half. We are proud to stand behind our products and offer the ability to extend your warranty coverage from the standard 2 years up to a total of 5 years. Click the button below to Get A Quote!

Extended warranties are only available at the time of purchase. They only extend the time our Limited Warranty is in effect; they do not add any additional coverage to the Limited Warranty itself. If you have any questions about extended warranties, please contact an IOPI Medical representative at info@iopimedical.com or (425)-549-0139.

To help you achieve the greatest level of success for your patients, we continue to provide you with the necessary Purchasing Advocacy tools, as well as clinical support.

Our Purchasing Advocacy tools can be found on our Medical Professionals page. Here, you will find our IOPI Dysphagia Cost Tool as well as a ready to use Benefits of IOPI for Dysphagia PowerPoint. Just populate it with information specific to your patient’s needs.

You also have clinical support at your fingertips. Our clinical consultant, Ed M. Bice, M.Ed., CCC-SLP is available to mentor through the advocacy process to assess and report the estimated cost of dysphagia to your facility. You can reach Ed for a patient consultation or clinical question by calling (844)-844-IOPI or emailing ed@iopimedical.com.

As many of you have already experienced, another fantastic resource we offer are our webinars. We have just come to an end of our current webinar program, which included an IOPI Advocacy webinar, as well as IOPI 101: Introduction to the IOPI System, a 1-hour webinar that introduces you to the IOPI Pro and IOPI Trainer, demonstrates the standard methods for measuring tongue and lip strength and endurance, and explains how to use this system for biofeedback during exercise.

We are currently working on a new schedule for our webinars and will update our website as soon as the information is available. In the meantime, you can click the button below to visit our Webinars page.

With 18 years of research using the IOPI, it can be difficult to choose only a few articles to share with you. To narrow the field a bit, we choose a specific topic to focus on in each newsletter. For this quarter, we have chosen Parkinson's Disease and have provided you with three relevant pieces.

This is only a small fraction of the number of IOPI-related studies in general. You can find many more, covering a variety of topics, by visiting: https://iopimedical.com/studies/ or clicking the button below.

Biomechanical Biomarkers of Tongue Impairment During Swallowing in Persons Diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32347416/

Twelve participants diagnosed with ALS underwent electromagnetic articulography to derive biomechanical measures of the tongue and a videofluoroscopic evaluation to measure swallow physiology, safety, efficiency, and maximal tongue strength testing using the IOPI. Participants also completed self-reported functional assessments. Findings demonstrated associations between tongue biomechanics and swallowing physiology, swallow safety, and self-reported measures. Swallowing safety during thin liquid intake was associated with tongue speed and range of motion, and swallowing safety with pureed textures was associated with tongue strength measurements.

Association between maximum tongue pressure and swallowing safety and efficacy in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32337820/

The study examined penetration aspiration scale scores and swallow efficiency using the Yale Pharyngeal Residue Severity Rating Scale in fifty‐five patients with ALS referred for FEES. Maximum tongue pressure and tongue endurance were measured using the IOPI. The authors compared tongue pressure measurements between patients with and without penetration, aspiration, or residue. Patients with residue in the pyriform sinus had lower maximum tongue pressures than patients without residue in the pyriform sinus with semisolids. Patients with a tongue endurance of less than 10 seconds had a higher frequency of penetration with liquids.

Changes in tongue pressure, pulmonary function, and salivary flow in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23242462/

Weakness and fatigue in the orofacial system often are presumed to contribute to the dysarthria associated with neuromotor disorders, although previous research findings are equivocal. In this study, tongue strength, endurance, and stability during a sustained submaximal effort were assessed in 16 persons with mild to severe Parkinson's disease (PD) and a perceptible speech disorder. The same measures were taken from one hand for comparison. Only tongue endurance was significantly lower in these participants than in neurologically normal control participants matched for sex, age, weight, and height. Analyses of data from a larger sample comprising the present and retrospective data revealed lower-than-normal tongue strength and endurance in participants with PD. No significant correlations were found between tongue strength and endurance, interpause speech rate, articulatory precision, and overall speech defectiveness for the present and previously studied participants with PD, bringing into question the influence of modest degrees of tongue weakness and fatigue on perceptible speech deficits.