Evaluation of tongue pressure during swallowing in glossectomy patients

Objectives:

Contact of the tongue against the hard palate plays an important role in swallowing. For patients who have undergone glossectomy, a palatal augmentation prosthesis may be applied to compensate for the functional disability of tongue. Although evaluation of the contact between tongue and hard palate was supposed to be important for the rehabilitation of these patients, appropriate method had not been established. We developed pressure sensor sheet with five measuring points that could be applied in oral cavity during physiological chewing and swallowing. The purpose of present study is to investigate the state of tongue pressure production before and after glossectomy using the original sensor sheet system.

Methods:

Eight patients who were diagnosed tongue cancer or cancer in the oral floor participated in this study. Tongue pressure during swallowing before and after surgery was recorded by using the sensor sheet attached on the hard palate directory with denture adhesive. For evaluation of swallowing ability, the time to swallow 30cc of water was measured in each subject. The magnitude of tongue pressure at each measuring point was compared before and after surgery using Student's t-test (P<0.05).

Results:

In dysphagic subjects showed worse swallowing ability, postoperative tongue pressure was smaller than that before surgery. On the other hand, there was no difference between tongue pressure before and after surgery in subjects reconstructed by forearm flap with well-rehabilitated in swallowing function. These results suggested that the amount of tongue pressure production was closely related to the tongue activity during swallowing.

Conclusions:

It was suggested that tongue pressure value could be useful parameter for evaluating dysfunction and treatment outcome in glossectomy patients as well as the necessity for rehabilitation of tongue movement disorder.