Relationship between Dysphagia and Home Discharge among Older Patients Receiving Hospital Rehabilitation in Rural Japan: A Retrospective Cohort Study

Ryuichi Ohta (), Emily Weiss, Magda Mekky and Chiaki Sano
Additional contact information
Ryuichi Ohta: Community Care, Unnan City Hospital, 96-1 Iida, Daito-cho, Unnan 699-1221, Japan
Emily Weiss: Department of Public Health, Old College, University of Edinburgh, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, UK
Magda Mekky: Department of Public Health, Old College, University of Edinburgh, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, UK
Chiaki Sano: Department of Community Medicine Management, Faculty of Medicine, Shimane University, 89-1 Enya-cho, Izumo 693-8501, Japan

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 16, 1-17

Abstract: Dysphagia refers to swallowing difficulty, which impacts patients’ quality of life. Dysphagia influences clinical outcomes, including mortality rates and length of hospital stay of older hospitalized patients. Dysphagia may affect the current and future quality of life of these patients. However, its exact impact remains unclear. We aimed to clarify the impact of dysphagia on discharge to home in older patients in a rural rehabilitation unit. We conducted a secondary analysis using data from a retrospective cohort study including patients aged over 65 years who had been discharged from a community hospital rehabilitation unit in rural Japan. Data from the participants had been previously collected from April 2016 to March 2020. The primary outcome was home discharge. The average participant age was 82.1 (standard deviation, 10.8) years; 34.5% were men. Among medical conditions, brain stroke (44.3%) was the most frequent reason for admission; the most frequent orthopedic condition was femoral fracture (42.9%). The presence of dysphagia (odds ratio [OR] = 0.38, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.20–0.73), polypharmacy (OR = 0.5, 95% CI: 0.32–0.90), and admission for internal medicine diseases (OR = 0.44, 95% CI: 0.26–0.77) were negatively associated with home discharge. High motor domain scores of the Functional Independence Measure were positively associated with home discharge (OR = 1.07, 95% CI: 1.05–1.08). Dysphagia was negatively associated with home discharge as were polypharmacy and admission for internal medicine diseases and conditions. By clarifying effective interventions through interventional studies, including approaches to managing multimorbidity and polypharmacy through interprofessional collaboration, the health conditions of older patients in rural areas may be improved.

Keywords: dysphagia; home discharge; older adults; rural hospital; rehabilitation; temporal flat lateral position; polypharmacy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/16/10125/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/16/10125/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:16:p:10125-:d:889348

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().