Junichi Fukaura, Tetsushi Tamekazu, Hideo Kaneko, Takeshi Nanba, Yasuhiko Takeda
The smooth swallowing posture (neck forward flexion posture) and swallowing function training to correspond to the aspiration are described in the medical literature. How to make neck forward flexion(NFF) posture and how to keep NFF posture is the biggest unresolved problem of dining chair development for researchers and developers in medicine and engineering. A dining chair designed to protect the elderly from aspiration and aspiration pneumonia was developed in Japan. We thought that if the function effect of the dining chair was truly demonstrated, it would be valuable information to all the elderly who have troubles in daily meal. We tried to verify the actual effect of the functional structure of the dining chair with electromyograph. As a result of the verification, it was confirmed that the meal with a new posture fixation system exhibited a smooth swallowing effect. The verification result of the dining chair of the new method is nice information for all the elderly in the world who continue to decline swallowing function.