Objective: To evaluate the relationship between bolus volume and hyoid displacement in dysphagia patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma after radiation therapy. Methods: Twenty-three nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients with dysphagia were recruited and their swallowing of 3, 5, 10 and 20ml of liquid food was studied fluoroscopically. The vertical and horizontal displacement of the hyoid as well as its time in motion were measured, and the relationship between the bolus volume, hyoid displacement and time in motion time was evaluated. Results: The largest vertical displacement of the hyoid (1.01±0.65cm) was observed when swallowing a 10ml bolus. The hyoid showed the smallest average horizontal displacement (0.39±0.34cm), when swallowing a 3ml bolus. The average motion time of the hyoid was (2.11±0.65) seconds. It was shorter when swallowing a 10 or 20ml bolus than when dealing with a smaller one. Hyoid motion time was negatively correlated with the horizontal displacement of the hyoid bone, and the volume of a swallow was negatively correlated with the hyoid motion time but positively correlated with the penetration-aspiration scale score. Conclusion Bolus volume affects hyoid displacement and hyoid motion time in nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients with dysphagia after radiation therapy. For patients with a penetration-aspiration scale score of 5 or less, the optimum bolus volume is 5 to 10ml.

Objective To explore the effect of PDCA [plan (P), design (D), check (C), act (A)] cycle on primary cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training for medical assistants in hospitals. Methods PDCA cycle was used to enhance continuous quality improvement (CQI) of team members to carry out brain storming to find out the root causes of the training difficulty, and directing to the 3 main root causes: lack of emergency rescue consciousness, without systematic training system and improper education procedure, it was proposed to arrange 3 great strategies: emergency rescue knowledge training, design of systematic training system and proper arrangement of training process. The changes of medical assistants' subjective willingness to perform the first aid, the accurate rates of answering questions on CPR location, frequency, depth, ratio of compression to breathing and awareness degree of CPR before and after training were observed. Results After training, the medical assistants' subjective willingness to perform the first aid was higher than that before training [91.7% (121/132) vs. 2.3% (3/132), P＜0.05]. The accurate answer rates on questions concerning CPR basic knowledge, such as location, frequency, depth and compression-breathing ratio had been greatly improved after training compared with those before training [location: 65.2% (86/132) vs. 4.5% (6/132), frequency: 40.2% (53/132) vs. 0 (0/132), depth: 90.2% (119/132) vs. 0 (0/132), compression-breathing ratio: 84.8% (112/132) vs. 1.5% (2/132 ), all P＜0.05]. After training, the percentage of medical assistants having very familiar awareness degree of CPR was significantly higher than that before training [65.2% (86/132) vs. 3.0% (4/132), P＜0.05]. Conclusion Via CPR training PDCA cycle, not only the efficiency of CPR training management is greatly improved, but also the training effect of participants is significantly elevated.