Investigating Eating Behaviors and Symptoms of Oral Frailty Using Questionnaires

Abstract

A questionnaire survey was conducted to investigate eating behavior and the subjective symptoms of oral frailty, and to examine the relationship between them. A total of 744 subjects with ages over 65 years were included. The questionnaire comprised 18 question items indicating eating behavior and seven question items indicating oral frailty. All items were assessed according to 4 grades on a scale of 1 (not applicable) to 4 (applicable). The total score of oral frailty gradually increased with age. Regarding the scores for “eating recognition” and “eating habits”, no changes were observed, however the scores for “eating action” demonstrated a decreasing tendency with age and the scores of ≥ 85 years age group was significantly lower than the 65–69, 70–74, and 75–79 years age groups. As a result of multiple regression analysis, among the significant independent variable, the scores of “I do not chew foods well” under the category of “eating action” showed the highest standard partial regression coefficients for dependent variable of symptoms of oral frailty. The significant association was found between the eating behavior and subjective symptoms of oral frailty, and this study suggests that the good chewing habit might be an important criterion for the prevention of oral frailty.

A systematic review and gap analysis of frailty and oral health characteristics in older adults: A call for clinical translation

“…After initial screening of 835 titles and abstracts, 70 articles were selected for full-text review, 26 of which were included in qualitative synthesis of this review (Figure 1). Seventeen of the studies were cross-sectional [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40] (Table 1), and nine were longitudinal [41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49] (Table 2). Despite being the innovative focus of this review, none of the studies encountered were translational in nature by either engaging a dentist in administering frailty assessment or utilising frailty status for dental treatment planning or gauging prognosis for oral health outcomes.…”

Effect of an Oral Frailty Measures Program on Community-Dwelling Elderly People: A Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial

“…The association between oral function and physical frailty has been clarified in recent works [1][2][3][4]. In light of this association, the concept of oral frailty was conceptualized as an accumulated poor oral status, and its relation to frailty has been studied [5,6]. Oral frailty is defined as a series of phenomena and processes.…”

Oral frailty: a concept analysis

“…Apart from describing oral frailty as decline in oral function or loss of oral function, Dibello et al proposed that the loss of oral function is driven by a set of impairments that worsen oral daily functions—eg, loss of teeth, poor oral hygiene, inadequate dental prostheses, or difficulty in chewing associated with age-related changes in swallowing [ 27 ]. Likewise, Minakuchi et al [ 28 ], Hihara et al [ 9 ], and Doi et al [ 29 ] specifically described the manifestations of oral frailty.…”

“…Since then, many researchers proposed similar definitions for oral frailty. They indicated that oral frailty is a mild decline in oral function, deterioration of oral function or loss of oral function [7][8][9][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26], and proposed that oral frailty is a precursor or accelerator of general frailty [9,19,20,25].…”

“…Some researchers indicated that oral frailty was an early stage of oral hypofunction [7], however, others considered these two concepts were totally different: oral frailty is a disease concept, and oral hypofunction is a condition [8]. Hihara et al assumed that oral frailty is an early manifestation of physical frailty [9].The Japan Dental Association proposed a more comprehensive definition of oral frailty, which referred to a…”