160 CHAPTER 7 Caregivers’ satisfaction. VAS for satisfaction of the procedure (0: entirely unsatisfied, 100: completely satisfied) scored amean of 55. VAS for recommendation of 2-DL (0: absolute no, 100: absolute yes) scored a mean of 59. Additional results are depicted in table 2. DISCUSSION Synopsis of key findings The present study evaluated the long-term (1 to 12 years) effect of 2-DL on drooling in patients with neurodevelopmental disabilities. Patients and caregivers indicated significant subjective positive effect of 2-DL in the medium to long-term. However, VAS for drooling increased significantly in the long-term when compared with measurements at 32 weeks. Additionally, a total of 14 patients (33.3%) underwent additional therapy due to insufficient effect of 2-DL. However, the majority of patients and/or caregivers would recommend 2-DL to peers. The majority of patients that did not undergo subsequent treatment reported ongoing effect of 2-DL. The remaining group reported an effect duration of 446 days, but since the date at which the effect had ended was an estimate given by caregivers, there is substantial risk of recall bias. Even so, the time until recurrence in this study was substantially higher than that mentioned in previous research on 2-DL, where there was a mean period of 3.2 months until recurrence.9 Strikingly, we did not find a significant difference in measurements when dividing long-term into medium-term (one year up to three years) and long-term (more than three years). The fact that 64% of the caregivers would still recommend the treatment to others indicates that the positive effect of 2-DL does outweigh its downsides in most cases. These findings are more positive than those of previous research where only 30% of caregivers were satisfied after 4-DL.16 However, this particular study only described 13 children, and satisfaction rates were acquired by a questionnaire using a three point scale.
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