Examination of the Relationship of Asymptomatic Swallowing Disorder Prevalence with Hypertension, Diabetes and Obesity in Elderly Population

Objectives: As one gets older, some changes occur in swallowing mechanisms. The non-symptomatic swallowing disorders associated with aging for no reason are called presbyphagia. Whether or not presbyphagia has any cause other than the mechanisms of aging is not clear. In our study, we investigated the association of presbyphagia with hypertension, diabetes, and obesity. Early detection of presbyphagia is important, and it is also important to reveal its association with common diseases encountered in society. Early diagnosis of the elderly presenting with presbyphagia who carry the risk for dysphagia is of big importance. For this geriatric population, we designed a study to establish the relationship among hypertension, obesity and diabetes mellitus with the prevalence of presbyphagia. Methods: In study was conducted on elderly populations aged 65 and over who met exclusion criteria. To able to reach the number of sampling, “EAT-10 questionnaire”, which also has a validation, was used to eliminate those with symptomatic swallowing disorders. The number of patients we reached was 320, but 7 dropped out the study and therefore the study was carried out with a total of 313 samplings (Reached as 97.8% (up 95% G-power)). We used validated sEMG test in the quantitative (objective) detection of dysphagia limit and during subsequent water swallowing test of 20 ml. In this method, swallowing disorder was detected in 39 cases (12.4%) out of 313 cases. Of the 313 asymptomatic geriatric groups, (n = 39) asymptomatic swallowing disorders were detected. The population without swallowing disorder was n = 274. Of these, 71% (25.9%) was seen to be present with obesity, while (35.8%) had diabetes and 54.7% had hypertension. Results: Among the elderly group without symptoms, the prevalence of asymptomatic dysphagia, namely presbyphagia, was 12.4%. With a simple, non-invasive, inexpensive, yielding quantitative results in short time method, it is possible to screen the geriatric population with asymptomatic swallowing disorders. It may also be interesting to reveal its relationship with three common diseases in this group, apart from early precautions to be taken. There was no significant difference in the prevalence of diabetes between the group with and without swallowing disorder (p = 0.434). There was no significant difference in the prevalence of obesity between the groups with and without swallowing disorder (p = 0.190). Obesity and diabetes are closely related diseases and it was significant in terms of reliability that these groups gave similar results to those of asymptomatic dysphagia. We found a significant difference (p = 0.044) in terms of HT between the group detected to have asymptomatic swallowing disorder and the group which was not detected to have. The risk of dysphagia in elderly people with hypertension was 2.104 times higher compared to those without hypertension (OR = 2.104, p = 0.048, 95% GA = 1.007-4.397). Conclusion: There could be a significant relationship between hypertension and dysphagia. It could be assumed that the presence of hypertension in the elderly may be RESEARCh ARTiCLE