Glossopharyngeal Nerve | Cranial Nerve IX / CN IX Assessment
The glossopharyngeal (CN IX) and vagus nerve (CN X) are commonly assessed together. They primarily innervate the muscles of the tongue and pharynx, the thorax, abdominal viscera, and larynx. No diagnostic accuracy studies are available on these assessments so the clinical value is unknown.
The patient may report having difficulties swallowing so asking the patient to take a sip on your command can be used as one assessment. You’d expect no delay or difficulty swallowing once you ask the patient to take a sip.
Furthermore ask the patient to say “aah” with the mouth wide open and check if the uvula elevates, inspect the palate for symmetry as well.
Examine the patient’s voice and cough. A hoarse voice or bovine cough can be indicative of vagus nerve impairment due to a lack of closing of the vocal cords creating a hollow sound.
Lastly, the gag reflex can be assessed. Using a tongue depressor touch the back of the tongue on both sides and check for a gag reflex. Alternatively use a wisp of cotton and touch the soft palate.
21 OF THE MOST USEFUL ORTHOPAEDIC TESTS IN CLINICAL PRACTICE
Learn more about the assessment of all cranial nerves below:
What customers have to say about the Assessment E-Book
Vince1992
25/04/20
The Assessment E-Book This book helped me in my studying for my exam and in assessing my first patients. Awesome! Also for beginners!
Simon Pagitz
06/04/20
The Assessment E-Book It’s an amazing Compilation! Congrats to all the work you have put in there. You’ll propably find all the test’s you’ve been looking for with propper explaination and source to doublecheck for you self. definetly a must have for every student, but it will also help an experienced practioner. Im looking forward to the lifelong updates on the topics.
Great work, guys
Jordi Burrut
27/10/19
The Assessment E-Book A must-have for all physiotherapists, osteopaths and manual therapists. The authors conducted an extensive research on assessment tests in manual therapy. I find it very easy to read. The more I read the more I learn. Thank you!
Josh
07/07/19
The Assessment E-Book This book is great! It is very structured and detailed. It works extremely well on my Macbook and iPad.
Polo_soa
15/02/19
The Assessment E-Book The best way to spend 80euros. Totally worth it. The amount of work you put behind this must have been absolutely huge. Every physical or physiotherapist should own it.
Congrats guys you’ve done an incredible job.
I’ve learnd a lot of new things and my approach to therapy in general have totally changed.
In one word: amazing. Keep going guys ! Best wishes from france.
We use cookies to optimize our website and our service. Read more
Functional cookies
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.