The purpose of this study is to design electrical stimulation system for stroke patients with pharyngeal dysfunction(dysphagia). Dysphagia is that the food has trouble in passing to the mouth from the stomach. Although we have many treatment methods for dysphagia, electrical stimulation system will be useful for stroke patients having dysphagia. Electrical stimulation system can be divided into body and electrodes. The body stimulation is composed to frequency counter, time control and current measurement part. These parts are to control the frequency, stimulating time and current intensity. And they can be variable according to the patient's clinical assessment. The electrode plays a role to deliver the current from the system to the muscle. Also the position of the electrode can be variable according to the treatment method. We performed the clinical experiment with stroke patients who had swallowing disorder. The video fluoroscopy was used for the observation. From the result of clinical experiment based on electrical stimulation, we expected that the dysfunction(in pharynx) level of the patient could be improved. However we could not have enough effectiveness of the treatment because of the number of patients, patient's adaptation and treatment period. We will design the optimized electrical stimulation system based on enough clinical experiment in the future.
