Oropharyngeal dysphagia in edentulous patients aged 60 years or over and its relationship with oral health and prosthetic status: a cross sectional observational study

Description :

This is a cross-sectional observational clinical study. Edentulous individuals aged 60 years and more will be recruited between April 2021 and March/April 2022 from dental health care services. A sample of edentulous patients having completed prosthetic treatments in the department of removable prosthodontics at Saint Joseph University of Beirut and in a private dental clinic from January 2011 till March/April 2022 will be randomly selected. Data will be collected from questionnaires and a clinical oral examination. The interview will include the socio-demographic data of the participants and lifestyle habits, the presence of comorbidities and medications, the level of autonomy (Shelkey and Wallace, 1999), questions related to the prosthetic rehabilitation, xerostomia and Oral Health Related Quality of Life (OHRQoL). Oral examination will evaluate the prosthetic status, the stability of the upper and lower dentures, the occlusal vertical dimension the edentulous crests’ condition, the number of functional dental units (FU), the condition of the maxillary and mandibular edentulous mucosa as well as the presence of oral lesions. The swallowing function of the participants will be assessed using the Eating Assessment Tool-10 (EAT10) to measure self-reported dysphagia (Nishida et al., 2020). An objective assessment of dysphagia will also be carried out using the Repetitive Saliva Swallowing Test (RSST) (Oguchi et al., 2000). The prosthetic and oral health parameters associated with oropharyngeal dysphagia will be determined using multivariate model.