• Yu-Hsin Chen, Wann-Yun Shieh, Yi-Fang Huang, Hsin-Yi Kathy Cheng, and Chin-Man Wang.
• Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Linkou, 33305, Taiwan.
• J Formos Med Assoc. 2024 Sep 1; 123 (9): 942949942-949.

BackgroundStudies have demonstrated that high-speed jaw-opening exercises are effective in improving swallowing function. However, there has been no objective tool available for monitoring jaw-opening pace. This study aimed to develop an objective tool for monitoring and validating jaw-opening pace and compare it between young and old ages from different age groups.Materials And MethodsA load cell plug-in jaw pad connected to an automatic recording and analysis system was used to record jaw-opening motions for offline analysis. We recruited 58 healthy volunteers from different age groups (20-39 y/o; 40-59y/o; 60-79y/o). During a 2-min recording session, each participant was instructed to fully open and close their jaw as quickly as possible while wearing a sensor. Bland-Altman plot, paired t-test and Pearson's correlation test were used to compare the number of jaw-opening motions between manual counting and automatic software analysis. The number of jaw-opening motions during the 2-min recording was compared between the three age groups.ResultsAutomated analysis of jaw-opening pace was efficient and equally comparable with the traditional manual counting method across the three age groups. A declining trend in jaw-opening pace among the old age group was found but with no statistically significant difference.ConclusionA jaw-opening motion monitoring tool with reliable automatic pace analysis software was validated in young and old ages The jaw-opening pace demonstrated a tendency to decline with age.Copyright © 2024 Formosan Medical Association. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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