Emily Plowman
Ohio State University, OH·Medicine & Clinical Research
Trouble swallowing, called dysphagia, often follows heart surgery. It can lead to malnutrition, dehydration and aspiration pneumonia, a lung infection that develops when food or liquid enters the airway.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Physiology
- Topics
dysphagia
swallowing impairment
cardiac surgery
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2026
What they work on
- Identify independent risk factors for dysphagia after heart surgery, collecting candidate predictors through the surgical period in 360 patients and using multivariable modeling to build a risk stratification tool and open-access app.
- Determine which simple bedside clinical tests accurately detect swallowing impairment, comparing them against simultaneous videofluoroscopy and fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation (VF-FEES), to validate a screening tool for the cardiac ICU.
- Define the physiologic mechanisms behind unsafe or inefficient swallowing after surgery, using blinded analyses of swallowing safety, efficiency, timing and movement (kinematics) on VF-FEES studies.
- Track how dysphagia recovers or persists at one and six months after surgery, re-examining affected patients to map long-term trajectories and the mechanisms of impairment and recovery.
More about the research
Patients may need a breathing tube put back in, and they tend to stay longer in hospital at higher cost. Aspiration pneumonia linked to dysphagia is preventable, yet it is a major cause of death. Care is held back by three gaps. Doctors do not know who is at risk. There is no validated tool for detecting dysphagia in the cardiac intensive care unit (ICU). And the mechanisms that impair swallowing, and later restore it, remain unknown. The project aims to fill these gaps and support a proactive care framework called the Model of Swallowing Integrated Care (MOSAIC), which covers prediction, prevention, detection and treatment.
Why it matters
Heart surgery patients could benefit from earlier, more accurate detection of swallowing problems. A risk tool and a bedside screening test may let care teams focus attention on the patients most likely to develop dysphagia. This could reduce aspiration pneumonia, reintubation, longer hospital stays and deaths. A clearer picture of what impairs swallowing could also guide future treatments and prevention.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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University of California-Davis, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Optimize and validate an automated, EHR-based model predicting postoperative respiratory failure, using surgical patient data from 2014 to 2021 and pre- and intra-operative risk factors.
Anna Krupp
University of Iowa, IA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Develop a clinical decision support system prototype in the electronic health record that identifies ICU patients suitable for physical activity, using clinician interviews and user-centered design.
The school
Ohio State University: 71 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 882 research doctorates a year.
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