Research on Dysphagia Rehabilitation -Relevance of Occlusion for Swallowing-

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The purpose of this research was to develop the new system that evaluate the relevance of dental factor for swallowing. In the previous year, we found that occlusal support and tongue movement were closely related to swallowing function. This year, we improved the system that could evaluate laryngeal movement simultaneously. In the elderly, there were so many denture-wearers, owing to the loss of their own teeth with aging. Although wearing and removing dentures gave considerable change in their oral cavity, especially, in complete denture-wearers, there was little study about both swallowing and dentures. So we selected wearing and removing dentures as a dental factor to evaluate relevance to swallowing. Subjects were experimented under four conditions ; with upper and lower dentures, without lower denture, without upper denture, without both dentures.Total swallowing duration and the latent period until laryngeal elevation were significantly prolonged without upper or lower denture, and without both dentures. Their prolongation was due to the prolongation of the preparatory and oral stages. Especially, removing upper denture disturbed the stable tongue movement on swallowing, and would affects the oral-pharyngeal coordination of swallowing, and exacerbates the depression of swallowing functions with aging. These results suggested the importance of wearing dentures as a new approach for dysphagia rehabilitation from the dentistry.