A Fundamental Study on the Masticatory Function and the Prevention and Control of Relapse of Oral Disorders in Handicapped Children

Part 3 Correlation between the whole body functional development and eating function

Abstract

The present report deals with the results of the studies on the correlation between the whole body functional development and the eating function in handicapped children who stay at home, which were performed on consignment of Tokyo Metropolitan City in 1983. In a succession of studies performed in 1982, various tests such as the Japanese system-revision of the Denver screening test, the oral function impairment test, macroscopic examination of the oral cavity and the eating function test, were performed.
The findings obtained were that retarded development of the eating function tended to be accompanied by higher gradings in the caries score, a higher ratio carious teth and mean deft per head as well as a high caries prevalence retio and that the impairmenat of oral function was practically independent of age in almost of the cases, except a few cases in which the impairment became more serious with age. With respect to the correlation between the whole body functional development and the eating function, the cases with better oral functions at the time of eating showed better development with a higher index of the whole body development. When conjecturing the development of the eating function on the basis of the whole body development, observations had to be made with special attention both on aspects of the individual and nis social daily life and on the aspects of walking with rough movements. Moreover, the aspect of lingual understanding was also important, and it was suggested that the acceleration of the lingual development may result in the development of the oral function.