Association between maximum tongue pressure in healthy elderly individuals and demographic and dental characteristics.
Darley Luiz Gomes Ribeiro, Thais Mendes Rocha Alves Vieira, Aline Mansueto Mourão and 2 others
PMID 39936701WHAT IT FOUND
Maximum tongue pressure in healthy older adults was higher in men and lower in those aged 80 or older than in those aged 60 to 69.
Dental status and denture fitting were not linked to pressure, while more teeth linked weakly to lower posterior pressure.
Key findings
01Mean maximum anterior tongue pressure was 40.8 kPa and mean maximum posterior tongue pressure was 43.4 kPa.
02Anterior tongue pressure was higher in men, and tongue pressure was lower in participants aged 80 or older than in those aged 60 to 69.
03Dental status and denture fitting did not show significant differences in maximum tongue pressure, while number of teeth had a weak inverse correlation with posterior tongue pressure.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that age, sex, or dental status caused changes in tongue pressure. The sample was healthy older adults and excluded people with disease, neurological disease history, craniofacial malformation, cancer or treatment sequelae, or language impairment that interfered with assessment, so it says little about those groups. The authors noted an imbalanced distribution between age ranges and sexes. Only four participants were toothless, so findings about toothless older adults are weak. 25.6% of denture users did not know how long they had used their dentures.
Declared interests
The authors declared no financial support and no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that tooth loss reduces tongue pressure. The study did not find significant differences between tongue pressure and dental status or denture fitting, and only four participants were toothless.