Common questions

Can someone with dysphagia drink through a straw?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on the individual, and an instrumental swallow study is what settles it for a specific person. A straw is not automatically dangerous and not automatically safe. Follow what your SLP put in the plan, and raise it with them if you think it should change.

The worry about straws is speed and placement: a straw can deliver liquid faster and further back in the mouth than sipping from a cup, which gives a slow or poorly-timed swallow less room to protect the airway. The argument the other way is that some people struggle to move liquid backward at all, and a straw does that work for them.

A 2020 study in the Spartan Medical Research Journal compared straw and cup drinking under endoscopy in 25 patients with symptoms of oropharyngeal dysphagia and found no statistically significant difference in penetration or aspiration scores between the two at any volume tested. The authors were careful about the limits: the group had mild symptoms and no documented aspiration, the sample was small, and endoscopy has a brief blind moment during the swallow itself.

Read that as evidence against the blanket rule that straws are always dangerous, not as evidence that straws are fine for everyone. It is exactly the kind of question an MBSS or FEES answers well, because the clinician can watch the same person drink the same liquid both ways and see the difference directly.

Two things not to do on your own: don't add or remove a straw because it seems to be helping, and don't use a straw as a way around a thickened-liquid order. If drinking is going badly at home, that is information the SLP needs, not a problem to solve quietly.