Toronto Rehab scientist honoured twice

Dr. Catriona Steele, whose work has shed light on the causes and treatment of swallowing disorders, is the 2010 recipient of the Speech-Language Pathology Alumni Association Distinguished Service Award and a newly-elected Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA).

“I’m incredibly honoured to be recognized by these prestigious associations as someone who is making a difference in the lives of people who have swallowing problems,” says Dr. Steele, a Senior Scientist at Toronto Rehab and an Associate Professor of speech language pathology at the University of Toronto.

The Distinguished Service Award is granted for academic, clinical and research contributions to the speech-language pathology profession. The ASHA Fellowship, which is retained for life, is awarded for outstanding contributions to the profession.

A speech pathologist by training, Dr. Steele has long been interested in swallowing disorders. Difficulty swallowing, or dysphagia, often occurs with conditions such as stroke, head injury and Parkinson’s disease. Many people may develop swallowing difficulties as they age and some 80 per cent of nursing home residents have problems swallowing. A major contributor to dysphagia is a loss of muscle strength in the head, neck and especially the tongue.

“When an injury or disease interferes with swallowing, the results can be devastating physically, psychologically and socially,” says Dr. Steele. Malnutrition, dehydration, choking and lung infections are often a result of swallowing disorders.  

Swallowing is a complex process involving 25 pairs of muscles moving in sequence. From her studies, Dr. Steele believes the key to the swallowing puzzle is the tongue. With her team at Toronto Rehab’s Swallowing Rehabilitation Research Laboratory, she is developing a tongue-pressure therapy to help people learn to swallow again. Participants use their tongues to press on a bulb positioned below the hard palate (the roof of the mouth).

Dr. Steele has also seen promising results using electromyography biofeedback (EMG), a technique that helps some people relearn control over the muscles that govern swallowing.

Sometimes people with swallowing problems inadvertently let food or fluid go into their windpipe. This can lead to fatal pneumonia. Dr. Steele and Dr. Tom Chau of Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital have designed a better way to detect whether someone has inhaled food or liquids – or is at high risk of doing so. It’s a simple, portable device that measures sound wave vibrations on the surface of the neck as someone swallows.

It was seeing how dysphagia devastates people that inspired Dr. Steele to unravel the mysteries of swallowing. In her earlier experience as a speech-language pathologist working in hospitals, she examined many patients with possible swallowing disorders.