2020 Volume 24 Issue 1 Pages 56-63
Some special needs patients have masticatory dysfunction such as swallowing food whole. However, there are no standard treatment methods for masticatory dysfunction. It is important for mastication to receive the input of sensory information about the food such as its softness and crispness when biting using the front teeth. Therefore, we created a new method of treatment for masticatory dysfunction by checking the food that the patient can and cannot chew. In addition, we combined food that they can chew with food they cannot chew and gave it to the patient. In this study, the patient with masticatory dysfunction was able to chew better with the new method.
The patient was a special needs 12-year-old female student with Down's syndrome. The main complaint of the mother was that the patient occasional suffered from choking. The types of food she ate were mainly chunks and soft diet food at school, and chopped diet food at home.
On the first visit, we found difficulties with chewing food and lip closure. We instructed her to use her front teeth when eating big chunks of food, which is a commonly used method for special needs patients. However, the dysfunction did not improve when eating soft food. Therefore, we tried a new method by combining food she can chew and food she cannot chew, such as pickles and rice, or cucumbers and hamburgers, and so on. We instructed the caregivers to use this method when feeding the patient. After 6 months, we were able to observe chewing actions when she was eating soft food that she could not chew before.
This report suggests that this new method is effective for improving masticatory dysfunction of special needs patients.
