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Background/purpose: Patients with disabilities usually have difficulties in communication and mobility, and the quality of the dental treatments are often inferior. This study uses the Taiwan National Health Insurance Database to analyze the quality of dental treatment for patients with disabilities who receive intravenous sedation (IVS). Materials and methods: This study selected patients with disabilities who received dental treatment under IVS. Their oral cavity was divided into three major sections: anterior teeth, upper posterior teeth, and lower posterior teeth. Self-matching of the same section was conducted to observe whether operative dental treatment (OD) with or without IVS affected the occurrence of dental retreatment. This study observed the occurrence of refilling and the duration from the end of treatment until retreatment to compare treatment differences with or without IVS. Results: After self-matching, this study found 158 patients who received dental treatment within the same section with and without IVS. During a follow-up period of 17 years, 75.18% of the patients who received OD treatment required refilling, 10.87% required endodontic treatment, and 5.67% required tooth extraction. After OD treatment with IVS, the risks of refilling, endodontic treatment, and tooth extraction were 0.71 (95% CI: 0.58–0.87, P

Background/purpose: Oral exercise is a training method for swallowing dysfunction in older adults. The study investigated the effect of oral exercise on tongue pressure in older adults in Taiwanese community day care centers over a 3-month period. Materials and methods: Participants over age 50 who were able to communicate and participating for the duration of the 12-week period were recruited from five community day care centers. A 15-min weekly group oral exercise activity was conducted. The tongue pressures were measured and multivariable linear regression models were used to assess the effect of oral exercise intervention on the participants’ tongue pressures. Results: A total of 66 older adult participants, among whom the mean age was 78.06 ± 10.74 years. Tongue pressure continued improving during the intervention period, and the mean tongue pressure at the end of the study was 20.63 ± 10.45 kPa, which was significantly higher than the baseline measurement (16.92 ± 10.62 kPa, p

Background/purpose: The purposes of this study were to report the suitability, alternate-forms reliability, and the concurrent validity of the analysis of diadochokinesis (DDK) samples in normal speech using the Diadochokinetic Rate Analysis (DRA) program. Methods: Fifteen healthy participants were recorded as they repeated various syllables as quickly and steadily as possible. When the lowest peak intensity during consonant-vowel syllables is lower than the highest peak intensity during intersyllable pauses, the DRA output is incorrect and the DDK sample is defined as nonexecutable. The executable DDK samples were hand measured and executed by the DRA program to generate outputs at different thresholds. Analyses were based on the percentage of nonexecutable DDK samples and the comparisons of the results between repeated analyses at different thresholds and between automatic and manual measuring methods. Results: One-ninth of the DDK samples could not be accurately executed. When the protocol could be accurately executed, the reliability at different thresholds and the validity between different measuring methods were both satisfactory. Conclusion: Although inadvertent articulatory breakdown or the incoordination of intrasyllabic movements were major limiting factors to the suitability, the alternate-forms reliability and concurrent validity of the analysis of DDK in adults with normal speech using the DRA program were both satisfactory if the DDK train was executable by DRA.