Comprehensive Oral Care Long-term Care Facilities

November 17, 2025 updated by: National Taiwan University Hospital

The Impact of Comprehensive Oral Care on the Eating Function in Long-term Care Facilities Residents

Oral care is a common way of caring for long-term care facility residents, particularly for those with swallowing difficulties, as oral health is closely related to eating function. Oral care includes general oral hygiene and comprehensive oral care (including cleaning, facial massage, oral muscle massage and stretching, and oral moisturizing). Regular oral care can reduce oral diseases, improve oral mucosa, increase appetite, and improve eating function. However, it is still unclear whether comprehensive oral care can improve eating function and aid in removing nasogastric tubes. Therefore, this study plans to recruit residents with dysphagia from multiple long-term care facilities nationwide to investigate the impact of comprehensive oral care on nasogastric tube removal. The study will collect basic information, disease diagnosis, and onset time and use random grouping to investigate the effects of general oral hygiene and oral care on nasogastric tube removal. The results of this study can provide guidance for clinical practitioners and researchers on oral care and eating function improvement for long-term care facility residents.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

91

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • Taiwan
    • Zhongzheng Dist.
      • Taipei, Zhongzheng Dist., Taiwan, 100
        • National Taiwan University Hospital

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Aged 18 years or older, with swallowing disorders classified as grades 1-3 on the Functional Oral Intake Scale (FOIS).
  • Conscious and alert.
  • Able to follow simple one-step commands (e.g., raising a hand, opening the mouth).
  • Able to maintain a seated position for more than 15 minutes.
  • Has a swallowing reflex (able to swallow saliva on command).

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Acute infection.
  • Hypoxemia (SaO2 < 90%) or requiring the use of a ventilator.
  • Structural abnormalities of the oropharyngeal area that prevent oral feeding.
  • Failing the water swallow test (coughing or wet voice in two or more out of three attempts, or no significant laryngeal elevation).

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Treatment
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
No Intervention: general oral hygiene
Experimental: comprehensive oral care
including cleaning, facial massage, oral muscle massage and stretching, and oral moisturizing.
Behavioral: comprehensive oral care
including cleaning, facial massage, oral muscle massage and stretching, and oral moisturizing.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Removing nasogastric tubes
Time Frame: Follow up for 6 months
Each subject was tracked at one month, three months, and six months for the status of their nasogastric tube.
Follow up for 6 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Time Frame
the functional oral intake scale
Time Frame: Follow up for 6 months
Follow up for 6 months
body weight
Time Frame: Follow up for 6 months
Follow up for 6 months

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

National Taiwan University Hospital

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Ming-Yen Hsiao, PHD, +886-2312-3456

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

May 25, 2023

Primary Completion (Actual)

November 29, 2023

Study Completion (Actual)

May 24, 2025

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

June 13, 2024

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

September 18, 2024

First Posted (Actual)

September 23, 2024

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

November 18, 2025

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

November 17, 2025

Last Verified

November 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 202305043RINC

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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