PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Takeshi Kera AU - Ayako Edahiro AU - Hirohiko Hirano AU - Hisashi Kawai AU - Hideyo Yoshida AU - Motonaga Kojima AU - Yoshinori Fujiwara AU - Kazushige Ihara AU - Shuichi Obuchi AU - the TOSHIMA Research Group TI - Alternating Motion Rate to Distinguish Elderly People With History of Pneumonia AID - 10.4187/respcare.04609 DP - 2016 Dec 01 TA - Respiratory Care PG - 1644--1650 VI - 61 IP - 12 4099 - http://rc.rcjournal.com/content/61/12/1644.short 4100 - http://rc.rcjournal.com/content/61/12/1644.full AB - BACKGROUND: Under the hypothesis that elderly people in the community may have deficient oropharyngeal dysfunction, the purpose of this case-control study was to compare oral and physical characteristics in elderly people with and without a history of pneumonia and to identify factors distinguishing them.METHODS: In 2014, we examined 1,311 elderly people who agreed to participate in a longitudinal and intervention study for the community-dwelling elderly. We looked at such physical characteristics as body composition, grip power, gait, and balance and at oropharyngeal characteristics, such as alternating motion rate (AMR) in speech and the repetitive saliva-swallowing test (RSST). The subjects were also asked about past history of pneumonia and other morbid conditions. From that information, we extracted 24 subjects reporting to have had pneumonia within the previous 5 y as well as 172 other subjects who matched the pneumonia subjects with respect to age, sex, and number of other morbidities to form 2 groups for comparisons. We also subjected the data to a logistic regression analysis, with having or not having pneumonia as the dependent variable, oral and physical characteristics as independent variables, and age and sex as covariates.RESULTS: No significant differences were seen in physical characteristics between the 2 groups. Among the oropharyngeal characteristics, AMR was significantly lower in the pneumonia subjects (P = .005, effect size = 0.20), whereas RSST exhibited no significant difference between the 2 groups. Logistic regression revealed AMR to be the only factor related to pneumonia (P = .002, odds ratio 0.169, 95% CI 0.056–0.508).CONCLUSIONS: In community-dwelling elderly people, association of pneumonia with skilled tongue control (AMR) rather than with swallowing (RSST) prompts a reexamination of what constitutes being at risk for pneumonia.