衰老与食团特性对口咽期吞咽过程中喉部运动的影响

文献信息

中文摘要

目的： 吞咽是一个复杂的感覺运动过程，会动态适应食团特性和生理变化。老年人年龄相关的神经肌肉变化可改变吞咽功能，可能损害吞咽安全性和效率。本研究通过使用力敏电阻（FSR）传感器和颈部听诊分析喉部移位和吞咽声音，探讨口咽期吞咽的年龄相关差异。
方法： 在16名健康年轻成人和12名健康老年人中评估了六项不同食团体积和黏度的吞咽任务。采用双因素混合模型重复测量方差分析，检验声学和FSR信号的时间及幅度参数差异。
结果： FSR信号分析显示，增加食团体积会缩短年轻成人喉部激活的持续时间，而在老年人中则显著延长喉部激活。此外，衰老显著增加了吞咽过程中喉部运动的总体持续时间，尤其是在松弛阶段。在任何分析中均未观察到显著的性别效应。
结论： 在老年人中，口咽期吞咽时喉部运动较慢，表明肌肉能力下降以及食团通过与喉部运动学之间的协调减弱。这些年龄相关的神经肌肉变化可能损害吞咽效率和气道保护，从而增加对吞咽困难相关并发症的易感性。未来研究应侧重于开发自动检测算法和多模态数据集，结合生理测量和吞咽成像，以客观地将传感器衍生特征与生理性吞咽事件联系起来。

英文摘要

PURPOSE: Swallowing is a complex sensorimotor process that dynamically adapts to bolus characteristics and physiological variations. Age-related neuromuscular changes in older adults can alter swallowing function, potentially compromising swallowing safety and efficiency. This study investigated age-related differences in oropharyngeal swallowing by analyzing laryngeal displacement and swallowing sounds using a force-sensitive resistor (FSR) sensor and cervical auscultation.
METHODS: Six swallowing tasks with varying bolus volumes and viscosities were assessed across 16 healthy young adults and 12 healthy older adults. A two-way mixed-model repeated-measures analysis of variance was conducted to examine differences in temporal and amplitude parameters of the acoustic and FSR signals.
RESULTS: FSR signals analysis revealed that increasing bolus volumes shorten the duration of laryngeal activation in young adults, whereas it produced significantly prolonged laryngeal activation in older adults. Additionally, aging significantly increased the overall duration of laryngeal movement during swallowing, particularly during the relaxation phase. No significant gender effects were observed in any of the analyses.
CONCLUSIONS: In older adults, slower laryngeal movement during the oropharyngeal phase of swallowing indicates reduced muscular capacity and diminished coordination between bolus transit and laryngeal kinematics. These age-related neuromuscular changes may compromise swallowing efficiency and airway protection, thereby increasing susceptibility to dysphagia-related complications. Future research should focus on developing automated detection algorithms and multimodal datasets that combine physiological measurements and swallowing imaging to objectively link sensor-derived features to physiological swallowing events.