title: Clinical criteria for the diagnosis of salivary gland hypofunction.
abstract: There is considerable difficulty in the making of initial clinical decisions as to whether a given patient has salivary gland hypofunction, and hence requires additional salivary gland evaluation. This study identified a set of four clinical measures that, together, successfully predicted the presence or absence of salivary gland hypofunction. The four measures were: dryness of lips, dryness of buccal mucosa, absence of saliva produced by gland palpation, and total DMFT; they were derived from discriminant analysis of data collected from 71 individuals with normal and low salivary flow rates. These measures are proposed as criteria for clinical decision-making, as well as for classification of patients in studies of salivary gland dysfunction syndromes. This study also identified unstimulated whole salivary flow rates of 0.12-0.16 mL/min as the critical range separating individuals with salivary gland hypofunction from those with normal gland function.
authors.affiliation: University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, General Clinical Research Center, Philadelphia.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Navazesh
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Christensen
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Brightman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D004245:DMF Index; D016002:Discriminant Analysis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008046:Lip / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009061:Mouth Mucosa / Q000473:pathology; D010173:Palpation; D010512:Periodontal Index; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012463:Saliva / Q000378:metabolism; D012469:Salivary Glands / Q000378:metabolism*; D012636:Secretory Rate; D014059:Tongue / Q000473:pathology; D014987:Xerostomia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology