Author(s)

Naoko Morisaki, Hiroe Uchida, Akiko Miyagawa

School of Nursing, Himeji University, Himeji, Japan.

This study aims to clarify the current state of oral function among elderly people and to analyze the relation with basic attributes. The subjects of the survey were dependent elderly people receiving nursing care in Japan. We examined the subjects’ age, sex, level of care required, living environment (home or facility), and oral functions. Tongue pressure and oral diadochokinesis (OD) were used to evaluate oral function. The relationship between the basic attributes of the elderly subjects and the oral function evaluation value was analyzed by multiple regression analysis. The average value of tongue pressure was 24.70 ± 10.20 Pa. The average value of OD was 4.7 ± 1.4 for /pa/, 4.6 ± 1.3 for /ta/, and 4.3 ± 1.3 for /ka/. Tongue pressure was found to be significantly related to the degree of care required (p < 0.01). The OD recognized syllables of /pa/, /ta/, /ka/ were significantly related to the degree of need for care and living environment (p < 0.05). The living environment is thought to affect oral function.

Elderly, Oral Function, Living Environment, Relationship

Morisaki, N. , Uchida, H. and Miyagawa, A. (2019) The Relationship between Living Environment and Oral Function in Elderly Japanese. Advances in Applied Sociology, 9, 71-78. doi: 10.4236/aasoci.2019.92006.