Drooling, Swallowing Difficulties and Health Related Quality of Life in Parkinson’s Disease Patients

Background: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the most common neurodegenerative disorder associated with motor and nonmotor symptoms. Drooling, one of the nonmotor symptoms, can be present in 70–80% of patients with PD. The aim of this paper is to study the characteristics of PD patients with drooling compared to those without in terms of age, gender, disease duration, stage of the disease, swallowing difficulties, and health-related quality of life; methods: a cross-sectional study was conducted. The sample was divided into two groups: PD with drooling ( n = 32) and PD without drooling ( n = 30). Age, gender, disease duration and Hoehn & Yahr (H & Y) stage, Sialorrhea Clinical Scale for Parkinson’s Disease (SCS-PD), the 10-item Eating Assessment Tool (EAT-10), and the 39-item Parkinson’s Disease Questionnaire (PDQ-39) were compared between groups; Results: 62 individuals with PD, 40 men and 22 women (mean age 73 ± 8 years), were included. Overall, 32 patients reported drooling, and 30 did not exhibit it. The ANCOVA found significant differences between groups for the EAT-10 score (0.83, 95% CI = 5.62–9.03; p = 0.016) and SCS-PD score (1.48, 95% CI = 0.86–6.81; p < 0.001). Analysis of the PDQ-39 scores revealed no significant differences between groups for the PDQ-39 total score ( p > 0.057) and in all subscales. The inclusion of gender, age, disease duration, and H & Y as covariates did not influence the results (all p > 0.05). Conclusions: drooling is related to swallowing difficulties assessed with EAT-10 but not with health-related quality of life assessed with PDQ-39 in PD patients with drooling compared to PD patients without it. Age, gender, duration of the disease, and the H & Y state of PD patients with and without drooling seem to be similar.