Relationship between basic activities and dysphagia in frail elderly persons

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to clarify the relation between the basic activities of frail elderly persons and dysphagia. As stroke is the most common cause of dysphagia, we divided frail elderly persons into two groups: those who had experienced stroke and those who had not. The subjects were frail elderly people in an intermediate welfare facility; 39 had experienced stroke and 61 had not experienced stroke. For the evaluation of basic activities, the ability of "maintaining a sitting position", "maintaining a standing position" and "walking" were checked; for the evaluation of dysphagia, frequency of choking was checked. The results showed that for the people with of experience stroke there was a correlation between basic activities and frequency of choking, and among people with ability of "standing" and "walking", those "rarely choking" were significantly large in number. Also compared with the people with ability of "sitting" the proportion of those choking was low. For the people with no of experience stroke, there were no correlation between the two. The proportion of those choking among those with "standing" and "walking" abilities was about half that of those with no "standing" and "walking" abilities. Also, 56% of people with stroke and 23% of people with no stroke experienced choking. Therefore, not only people with stroke, but people with no stroke, frail elderly persons whose basic activities are declining can suffer from dysphagia. Among the frail elderly persons with stroke, it is suggested that the ability of "standing" is the clinically important index to predict the risk of dysphagia.