Abstract
We examined the efficiency of echo in evaluating the function of eating and swallowing. A main subject of this study was to establish the method of evaluation when using the echo test, and we especially focused our attention on the movement in the oral phase. We evaluated eight healthy adults (3 males and 5 females, range from 25-40 years of age), who had no functional or morphologic abnormality in the stomatognathic region. All subjects were required to swallow 3mQ of water or 3m9 of pudding during the evaluation. The echo apparatus was a 5 in ALOKA, the probe was electro-micro convex. We converted the filed DV-AVI to 30 frames a second, set up tracers forward, center and backwards and measured the moving distance from the locus. We analyzed the results with an image analyzer (by Desimo Co.). As a result, the distance of the tongue movement increased in the subjects who swallowed the pudding more than in those who swallowed the water, and we were able to quantify the momentum in the bolus transportation. In addition, the coefficient of variation in the cases varied only slightly for water but they showed wide variations for pudding. We hypothesize that such variation was due to the greater individual differences in the swallowing of pudding in comparison to the swallowing of water, and these differences were easily identified in our study.
