Abstract
The purpose of this study was to elucidate the occlusal condition, feeding function and nutritional status of elderlypersons needing long-term care at home, and to create a database in order to reduce the need for nursing care.
The subjects were 213 people (52 men and 161 women; mean age, 85.0±5.2 year) who required daycare services inTokyo. We evaluated the subjects' natural teeth and the condition of wearing dentures, in accordance with the Eichner occlusal support region, by dividing them into three groups: 1) Occlusal support maintenance group, 2) Occlusalsupport maintenance by dentures group, and 3) No occlusal support group.The swallowing function was evaluated byrepetitive saliva-swallowing test, and the feeding dysfunction was evaluated by observation of eating meals. Thenutritional status was evaluated by measuring the boundary length of the upper posterior arm and the thickness ofsubcutaneous fat over the triceps, and the boundary length of the brachial muscle was calculated. These values wereexpressed as physical measurement percentiles based on the median values of each age group and sex in the NewJapanese Physical Measurement Standard (JARD 2001).
We obtained following results: 1) Eighty percent of subjects had no occlusal support in the molar region, and 20% ofthem did not have any dental prosthesis. 2) Twenty-two percent of the subjects had swallowing disorders; most of thisgroup had worse occlusal support. 3) Subjects with swallowing disorder or feeding dysfunction showed poornutritional status. 4) Subjects who had no occlusal support showed poor nutritional status.
These finding showed that elderly people needing slight but long-term care had decreased occlusal support andfeeding/swallowing functions, and these factors were suggested to be correlated with nutritional status.
