Maximum Anterior Tongue Strength and Maximum Lip Strength in Healthy Spanish Adults: A Proposal of Reference Values.
Enrique Marín-Bernard, María Dolores Ruiz-López, Basilio Gómez-Pozo and 1 others
PMID 38240852WHAT IT FOUND
In healthy Spanish adults, tongue strength falls with age but does not differ by sex, while lip strength is higher in men and does not change with age.
Use tongue reference values by age group and lip reference values by sex when interpreting IOPI scores.
Key findings
01Mean maximum anterior tongue strength was 49.63 ± 13.81 kPa in the total sample, and no significant sex difference was found (p = 0.797); tongue strength decreased with age in men (r = -0.264, p = 0.006) and women (r = -0.407, p = 0.001).
02Mean maximum lip strength was 24.96 ± 8.61 kPa overall, higher in men (28.86 ± 10.88 kPa) than women (23.37 ± 6.92 kPa, p = 0.001), with no significant correlation with age in men (r = 0.081, p = 0.409) or women (r = -0.086, p = 0.167).
03The paper proposes reference values for tongue strength by age group and lip strength by sex, expressed as percentiles.
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How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The participants were selected by non-probability sampling in one province, so the reference values may not apply to all Spanish-speaking adults. The sample was healthy and excluded people with swallowing, speech, neurological, respiratory, cancer, recent surgery, sedation, infection, allergy, or mouth and breathing problems, so the values do not describe patients with dysphagia. The study did not compare people with swallowing problems or follow outcomes, so it cannot show whether these values diagnose dysphagia or guide therapy. Other factors that could affect strength, such as nutritional status and physical activity, were not considered.
Declared interests
The study reports funding by the University of Granada. No additional conflict-of-interest declaration is provided in the supplied text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use these values as universal diagnostic thresholds for swallowing problems. They are reference values from healthy Spanish adults recruited in Granada, and the paper did not test people with dysphagia or swallowing outcomes.