Interference of the early and late drug therapy in Parkinson disease in the management of dysphagia

Parkinson’s disease shows a higher incidence in the elderly population generating progressive motor impairment, which affects several functions, among which stands out swallowing. The purpose of this study is to correlate the dysphagia in Parkinson’s disease with immediate and / or late effect of the drug treatment, which directly or indirectly, will interfere with speech therapy management. We carried out a literature review in electronic databases Lilacs, Scielo, Medline and Pubmed from 2001 to 2011, using the free terms “Parkinson Disease”; (Parkinson Disease), “swallowing”; (deglutition), “dysphagia”; (dysphagia), “pharmaceutical preparations”; (pharmaceutical preparations), “levodopa”;, “videofluoroscopy”; (videofluoroscopy), a government document (OPAS, 2002), relevant articles and copies of American and Brazilian literature about the theme. The literature appointments levodopa as the main pharmacological treatment of the Parkinson’s disease. However, the resolution of the motor symptoms must be balanced in function of important collateral effects, being immediate or later. Actually, there aren’t consistent answers in favour of the resolution of the dysphagia in consequence of pharmacological treatment, wich effects may interfere, direct or indirectly, on the dysphagic manifestations and of several ways. In this way, turns fundamental the record of the medications like part of the anamnese, considering that, such data may help orientation/reorientation of the phonoaudiologic management, specially interdisciplinary context. In despite of possibility of Parkinson’s patient to answer inconsistently to pharmacological therapy, is noteworthy that professional must pay attention to presence of collateral effects like modifiers factors of the dysphagia oropharyngea profile in the idiopatic Parkinson’s disease.