Oral frailty and its association with systemic health: A narrative review

Abstract

This narrative review examined whether six measures of oral frailty (number of teeth present, chewing ability, articulatory oral motor skills, tongue pressure, difficulty in eating tough foods, and difficulty in swallowing fluids) were associated with an improvement in general health problems in older adults and whether interventions for oral functional decline would improve their general health status. We included longitudinal and intervention studies focusing on these six oral frailty parameters published between 2017 and 2020 in PubMed. The National Institutes of Health Quality Assessment Toolkit for Quantitative Research was used to assess methodological quality. Twenty‐five longitudinal and four intervention studies met the eligibility criteria. Among the longitudinal studies, oral frailty (defined as the applicability of three or more of the six parameters) was associated with physical frailty, sarcopenia, need for nursing care, death, nutritional status, and home status; chewing and bite strength were associated with frailty and death; and dysphagia was associated with death. The intervention studies showed that five of the six oral frailty parameters could be improved, except the number of teeth. Further studies must be conducted on treatment methods to promote functional recovery in these five parameters and evaluate their relationship with the general health status.