Background Patients with Huntington’s disease (HD) may develop dysphagia during the course of their disease since the early stages. Swallowing difficulties reduce quality of life and lead to malnutrition and aspiration pneumonia which is a major cause of death in HD. There is a growing literature reporting the use of instrumental assessments, like the fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES) and the videofluoroscopic swallow study (VFSS), as diagnostic tools of dysphagia in HD.

Although the instrumental evaluation remains the ideal study for detecting aspiration, the clinical evaluation is still considered an important step for dysphagia management. Cervical auscultation has been used in other neurological diseases as a non-invasive tool in addition to the clinical evaluation to detect abnormal acoustic features of the swallow.

Aim The aim of the present study was to analyze the feasibility of cervical auscultation and to study the swallowing sounds of HD patients.

Methods The swallowing sounds of 25 HD patients with confirmed diagnosis of dysphagia were recorded using a neck microphone and analyzed using the Praat software. All patients underwent the clinical evaluation of swallowing and the FEES before the cervical auscultation. The mean duration of the swallowing sound and other acoustical features during the swallowing of 10 ml of water were analyzed and compared with the recordings of a matched group without dysphagia.

Results The mean duration for the swallowing of 10 ml of water was significantly different between patients with HD and healthy individuals. Patterns of abnormal swallowing sounds were also qualitatively described, including irregular breathing coordination.

Conclusions The cervical auscultation may be adopted as a non-invasive tool for clinical evaluation. Further studies using the instrumental evaluation in combination with the swallowing sound analysis are needed in order to confirm these preliminary results.