The national government has introduced a project called “Promotion of prevention of undernutrition and oral cavity, medication and lifestyle-related diseases in the elderly”, but some people including bedridden people who require nursing care at home cannot receive health checkups and relevant face-to face guidance as a hospital or clinic visit already poses a challenge. As such, the Gifu Dental Association was commissioned to conduct a home-visit dental checkup project for people cared at home from 2008 to 2008. This report describes the findings of the checkup. For three years from 2016 to 2018, dentists and dental hygienists provided home dental checkups and oral health guidance to 56 elderly persons requiring nursing care (nursing care level 3-5) who were at home in Gifu City and who had applied for and were not receiving dental treatment or in-home care management guidance. The data of the health examination results were anonymized. Statistical analysis was performed to determine the association between the level of care required, the number of teeth present, the occlusal relationship of molars, and the evaluation of oral function (palpation of masticatory muscles, tongue placement, coughing, gargling, and RSST) by Spearman's rank correlation coefficient. The statistical significance level was set at 0.05. Statistical analysis of the data from this examination revealed a correlation between the occlusal relationship of the molars, coughing, and RSST. This result suggests that there may be a relationship between changes in occlusal relationship and pharyngeal muscle groups. In addition, there was a correlation between the tongue and palpation of masticatory muscles, coughing, gargling, and RSST. Therefore, it is suggested that the examination of the tongue may be one of the indicators to infer the functional decline of the muscle groups related to the oral cavity, such as the masticatory muscle, the orbicularis oris muscle, and the pharyngeal muscle group.
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