Study on the Method to Diagnosis Oral Moisture Accurately

Objectives: There are many patients who experience oral dryness. An oral moisture checking device is a device that can measure the oral mucosal moisture within 2 seconds. The aim of this study was to investigate the usability of using a tongue depressor for the measurement of lingual mucosal moisture. Methods: The subjects of this study were 36 healthy adults. The moisture was measured using an oral moisture checking device (Mucus®, Life Co., Japan) at the lingual mucosa five times with and without a tongue depressor (Men-tip®, Nihon-Menbow Co., Japan), and the median was calculated for analysis. The difference of the changes of five times' measurement was also calculated to evaluate the dispersion of the measurement. Statistical analysis (Wilcoxon signed-ranks test) was performed to compare the measurement values and the difference of the changes with and without the tongue depressor. Results: The average lingual mucosal moisture with the tongue depressor was 30.9±1.3%, and without the tongue depressor was 29.4±2.3%. There were statistically significant difference between the measurement value with and without a tongue depressor (p<0.01). The difference of the changes when the moisture was measured with the tongue depressor was 3.2±1.7%, and without the tongue depressor was 4.6±4.4%. There was not statistically significant difference between the difference of the changes with and without the tongue depressor (p=0.14). Conclusions: The results of this study made it clear that the measurement value with the tongue depressor was larger than that without the tongue depressor. The reason for this result was considered that using the tongue depressor made it possible to press the device to the lingual mucosa steadily. It was suggested that using the tongue depressor for the measurement of lingual mucosal moisture is a useful way to control the measuring pressure, and results in a more accurate diagnosis of oral dryness.