A simple measurement of parotid salivary flow using material quick absorber

We applied Material Quick Absorber (Inami Co Ltd, Tokyo, Japan), a small triangular paper strip made mainly from viscose and used for fluid absorption during surgery, to collect right resting parotid saliva directly from Stensen's orifice and estimated nonstimulated parotid salivary flow by weighing the saliva absorbed in a given period of time. We assayed this method in 53 patients with dry mouth and/or throat and in 115 healthy young and elderly control subjects. The median salivary flow rates in male and female patients were 18 mg/min (almost equal to 0.018 mL/min) and 11 mg/min, respectively, significantly lower (P less than .05 for men, P less than .01 for women) than those obtained from young male (36 mg/min) and female (34 mg/min) controls and consistent with previously reported physiologic flow rates obtained by means of the "cup method." Although the median flow rate for elderly male controls (35 mg/min) was rather close to that of young male or female controls, there was no significant difference in flow rates between elderly male controls and male patients. On the other hand, in female control subjects, a significant decrease (P less than .05) in salivary flow was shown with aging. Repeated 3-minute measurements (eight times at 5- to 6-minute intervals) with this method in 10 healthy younger male volunteers showed that the coefficient of variance in the same subject ranged from 14.1% to 57.2% and that the larger the mean flow rate the smaller the coefficient of variance (P less than .05 by simple regression analysis).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)