Effects of Hand Exercise on Eating Action in Patients With Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract

We aim to investigate whether a popular hand exercise could be used to improve the action of eating in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). A 6-month intervention was conducted in 60 patients with AD who live in a nursing home. They were divided into hand exercise and control groups. Patients of the control group maintained their daily routine. The improvement of Edinburgh Feeding Evaluation in Dementia scale in hand exercise group was significantly greater than in the control group (P =.003). Significant differences in time of autonomous eating and time of simulated eating between patients in the hand exercise and control groups (P