Anatomy

Bolus

Also written as food bolus, liquid bolus, bolus of food.

A bolus is the ball of food or sip of liquid you are swallowing at that moment, after it has been chewed and mixed with saliva.

Bolus is the word clinicians use for whatever you are swallowing right then. It might be a bite of chicken, a sip of water, or a spoonful of applesauce. When you chew, your tongue gathers the food, mixes it with saliva, and shapes it into one soft, moist clump. That clump is the bolus.

Reports use the word because it is shorter than writing out "the bite of food" over and over. You will see sentences like "the bolus was held in the mouth" or "part of the bolus remained in the throat." Each one is simply describing where that particular mouthful went.

A swallow study usually looks at several different boluses, one at a time: thin liquid, thicker liquid, puree, a cracker. That is on purpose. A person's swallow can behave differently depending on what is in the mouth, so each one gets its own note.

Describing each bolus separately lets the speech-language pathologist record exactly which textures and amounts moved smoothly and which ones did not, instead of lumping every swallow together. It is a way of being precise, not a judgment about any one bite.