title: Fork test: A new simple and reliable consistency measurement for the dysphagia diet.
abstract: The objective of this study was to validate fork test which is a simple tool to assess the consistency of food. The consistencies of 27 water and thickener mixtures were measured with a viscometer. These measures were then compared to those obtained with fork test to evaluate the validity of fork test. The inter-observer and intra-observer reliabilities of the fork test were assessed with an intra-class correlation coefficient. The viscometer was used to obtain reference values for three categories (0-300 cP, 300-10,000 cP, and >10,000 cP) in order to categorize water and thickener mixtures into grade 1, grade 2, or grade 3 according to the results of fork test. Our results revealed that the fork test showed excellent validity (r = -0.889, p < 0.05), intra-observer reliability, and inter-observer reliability. Therefore, fork test may be used as a practical tool to assess food consistency.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Dongguk University Ilsan Hospital, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: jinwoo.park.md@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Jin-Woo
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Park
authors.affiliation: Department of Food and Nutrition Service, Dongguk University Ilsan Hospital, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: In-Jung
authors.initials: IJ
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Dongguk University Ilsan Hospital, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Ho-Jun
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003680:Deglutition Disorders / Q000178:diet therapy*; D004032:Diet / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015588:Observer Variation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014783:Viscosity
keywords: Diet; Dysphagia; Food thickener; Treatment; Viscosity