Misswallowing by Elderly People During Meal Aid in Japan: Evaluation on the Liquefaction of Rice Gruel Over Time and Preventive Measures

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26671009
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Gerontological nursing
• Research Institution: Shiga University of Medical Science
• Principal Investigator: KATO KEIKO 滋賀医科大学, 医学部, 教授 (90224500)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): SAWAI Nobue 滋賀医科大学, 医学部, 准教授 (30303788) ; KAWAHIRA Akiko 滋賀医科大学, 医学部, 技術補佐員 (70648899) ; ITO Atsuko 滋賀医科大学, 医学部, 教務補佐員 (70726380) ; SATO Takayuki 滋賀医科大学, 医学部, 教務補佐員 (40726379)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 基礎看護学 / EBN / 粥 / 高齢者 / 誤嚥予防

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Improvement of meal aid for elderly people is one of the major issues in basic nursing science. In Japan, rice gruel is a common meal for the elderly who need support for eating, scooped up from the bowl to their mouths by helpers. The risk of misswallowing during eating increases with laps of the time because the rice gruel liquefies gradually. Our previous research clarified that rice gruel is dissolved and liquefied in the bowl by Alpha-Amylase (sAA, hereafter) in saliva from the elderly. However, no information was available for the function of saliva collected from different generations and genders. In this project, we carried out a series of physiochemical experiments, and quantified the activity values of the sAA among those of healthy men and women of sixties and twenties. It was demonstrated that the activity value of sAA for elderly men and women are higher than those for young men and women, suggesting that the risk of misswallowing for the elderly is very high.

Free Research Field

看護学