ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurol.
Sec. Neurorehabilitation
The effect of evidence-based discharge planning on the health outcomes of stroke patients with dysphagia: A prospective cohort study
Provisionally accepted
Yanping Lei1,2Min Li1,2,3
Zhenxing Liu1,4Yan Zhang1,2Rong Huang1,2Dandan Chen1,2Xiaoling Liu1,2Xiao Fu1,2GangRong Huang1,2
Jun Wei1,2*- 1The First College of Clinical Medical Scienceļ¼ China Three Gorges University, Yichang, China
- 2Yichang Central People's Hospital, Yichang, China
- 3Hubei Province Clinical Medical Research Center for Rare Diseases of Nervous System, Yichang, China
- 4Yiling People's Hospital, Yichang, China
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Aim(s): To evaluate the effects of an evidence-based discharge planning on the health outcomes of stroke patients with dysphagia. Design: Prospective cohort study. Methods: This study was conducted with stroke patients who were diagnosed with dysphagia and scheduled to be discharged to their homes. A total of 90 eligible patients were consecutively enrolled to the exposed group and non-exposed group. The exposed group received an evidence-based discharge planning with follow-up at 7 and 30 days after discharge. The non-exposed group received routine care with the same length of care and follow-up as the exposed group. Trained research assistant collected all patients' baseline data on admission (T0), recorded unplanned re-admission and aspiration, evaluated the discharge readiness, self-management ability and safe feeding on the day of discharge (T1), 7 days post-discharge(T2), and 30 days post-discharge (T3). Results: Compared with the non-exposed group, the exposed group showed significantly lower rate of unplanned readmission, lower incidence of aspiration, improvement in discharge readiness, self-management ability, and safe feeding scores. Conclusions: An evidence-based discharge planning can significantly reduce unplanned readmission rate and aspiration in stroke patients with dysphagia, and significantly improving patients' discharge readiness, self-management ability and safe feeding. It provides clinical care with a clear and effective guideline plan for the management of patients with dysphagia in stroke.
Keywords: Stroke, dysphagia, Discharge planning, Unplanned readmission, aspiration, self-management, Safe feeding
Received: 29 Sep 2025; Accepted: 19 Nov 2025.
Copyright: Ā© 2025 Lei, Li, Liu, Zhang, Huang, Chen, Liu, Fu, Huang and Wei. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jun Wei, junwei@ctgu.edu.cn
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