Clinical Significance of Oral Care and Oral Management on the Treatment and Prevention of Aspiration Pneumonia in the Elderly: Evidences and Pitfalls

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Author Info

Shinji Teramoto

Corresponding Author

Shinji Teramoto
Department of Respiratory Medicine, Tokyo Medical University Hachioji Medical Center, Tokyo, Japan

A B S T R A C T

Oral care and oral management are important for preventing aspiration pneumonia (ASP). The main pathology of ASP is microaspiration of oropharyngeal contents during night, swallowing rehabilitation must be necessary for the ASP treatment. However, swallowing rehabilitation cannot totally restore the normal swallowing function. Oral healthcare management should be initiated and continued in parallel with antibiotic treatment of ASP. Oral care helps to prevent aspiration pneumonia by reducing oral bacteria, while oral management helps by improving masticatory and rehabilitating functions. The efficacy of oral care for reducing the incidence of pneumonia has been clearly observed in untreated frail elderly patients, but not in well-cared elderly persons. It has been established that oral care is cyclically significant for the prevention of ASP in the elderly. However, oral problems are not the primary cause of ASP in the elderly. Although there is an amount of evidences of oral care for ASP prevention, there are some controversies of the clinical significance of oral care for ASP treatment.

Article Info

Article Type

Review Article

Publication history

Received: Mon 20, Jul 2020
Accepted: Tue 04, Aug 2020
Published: Tue 11, Aug 2020

Copyright

© 2023 Shinji Teramoto. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.DOBCR.2020.04.01