[Study of mastication in denture wearers among various ages].

Introduction: Recent studies have shown that it was possible for subjects with masticatory deficiency chewing achieve a satisfactory level of fragmentation of food by acting on some physiological parameters as the number of cycles and the time devoted to a sequence of mastication.

Method: The objective of this work is to study the effects of the wearing of complete prostheses, of ageing on the physiological parameters from the chewing on a population of 110 subjects.

Results: The results show an important effect of the dental status. Indeed denture weaers need twice more cycles than controls of the same age to make a ham portion ready to be swallowed. Significant an age effect with regard to the number of cycles was also noted. The rheology of food affects the number of cycles which increases with the hardness of food.