| Budget Amount *help |
¥1,900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,900,000)
Fiscal Year 2001: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000)
Fiscal Year 2000: ¥1,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,300,000)
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| Research Abstract |
Although masticatory ability depends on the number of permanent teeth in elderly persons, artificial prostheses such as dentures are used for restoring lost masticatory function in their daily life. In this study, the relationships between masticatory ability and the number of functional teeth (both natural and artificial teeth) were evaluated by means of a functional tooth triangle map method cleated by the author.
In this study, I used three survey data sets those were the Longitudinal Interdisciplinary Study on Aging of Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, a longitudinal nationwide investigation of Nihon University Center for Information Networking research project and the survey of physical ability of elderly people living in isolated islands in Tokyo. Using such data sets, I classified all elderly person into groups based on their gender and masticatory ability. Then each person was plotted on a functional tooth triangle map, and the distribution was investigated.
As a result, in the masticatory ability 5 group with high masticatory ability, exact number of people had more than 20 natural teeth. Furthermore, larger number of people had more than 25 functional teeth including full dentures, showing high rates, and prostheses such as full dentures were useful for improving masticatory ability.
In the masticatory ability 1 group (insufficient masticatory ability), in which the number of persons was less than 10 % of all the subjects, although the number of functional teeth was almost restored by wearing dentures, no sufficient functional recovery was obtained. The rate of persons with low masticatory ability was higher in females than in males, which may be due to the weakness of masticatory muscular force.
Through this study, I believe firmly that the new method of functional tooth triangle map is very useful for evaluate community dental health level for elderly people.
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