Subjective Assessment of Videofluoroscopic Swallow Studies
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective The videofluoroscopic swallow study (VFSS) is the gold standard diagnostic tool to evaluate oropharyngeal dysphagia. Although objective measurements on VFSS have been described, there is no universal method of analysis, and the majority of clinicians use subjective interpretation alone. The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the accuracy of subjective VFSS analysis. Study Design Double-blinded experiment. Setting Tertiary care laryngology center. Subjects and Methods Seventy-six de-identified videos from VFSS evaluations of patients with dysphagia were presented to blinded, experienced speech-language pathologists and laryngologists individually. Evaluators rated each video as normal or abnormal for hyoid elevation (HE), pharyngeal area (PA), pharyngeal constriction ratio (PCR), and pharyngoesophageal segment opening (PESo). A blinded investigator assessed evaluators' inter- and intrarater agreement and compared their responses to objectively measured results for these parameters to examine accuracy. Results Evaluators correctly classified only 61.5% of VFSS videos as normal or abnormal, with moderate interrater agreement (κ = 0.48, P < .0001). Intrarater agreement was highly variable (κ = 0.43-0.83). Accuracy was greatest for PCR (71.6%), with poorer performance for HE (61.3%), PESo (59.2%), and PA (45.3%). Interrater agreement was moderate for all parameters, with greater concordance for PCR (κ = 0.59) and PESo (κ = 0.54) and less for HE (κ = 0.40) and PA (κ = 0.44). Evaluators unanimously agreed on a correct interpretation of a VFSS only 28% of the time. Conclusion Subjective assessment of VFSS parameters is inconsistently accurate when compared with objective measurements, with accuracy ratings ranging from 45.3% to 71.6% for specific parameters. Inter- and intrarater reliability for subjective assessment was moderate and highly variable.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.019 | 0.071 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".