Association between teeth loss and nasogastric tube feeding dependency in older adults from Taiwan: a retrospective cohort study

Table 2 Results of multivariate Cox proportional hazards analysis of incidence of nasogastric feeding dependency

Demographics	Adjusted Hazard Ratio	(95% CI)	p-value
Number of teeth lost^a
0	Ref
1–9	1.02	0.81–1.29	0.87
10–28	1.31	1.05–1.62	0.02
Age (years)	1.09	1.07–1.10	< 0.001
Gender
Female	Ref
Male	1.31	1.06–1.63	0.01
Body mass index (kg/ m²)
Underweight (< 18.5)	1.11	0.78–1.58	0.56
Normal weight (18.5–23.9)	Ref
Overweight (24–26.9)	0.95	0.78–1.15	0.58
Obesity (≥ 27)	1.02	0.82–1.27	0.87
Marriage status
Married/cohabiting	Ref
Never married	1.47	0.94–2.32	0.09
Widowed/divorced/separated	1.06	0.87–1.28	0.58
Education
Low (elementary or below)	Ref
Moderate (junior/senior high)	0.75	0.59–0.95	0.02
High (college or above)	0.79	0.56–1.11	0.18
Household income
<US$952/month	Ref
US$952–2222/month	1.12	0.93–1.35	0.22
>US$2222/month	1.16	0.88–1.52	0.30
Smoking status
Never	Ref
Current	1.24	0.96–1.60	0.10
Alcohol consumption
No	Ref
Less than once a week	0.71	0.53–0.94	0.02
More than once a week	0.82	0.62–1.10	0.18
Vegetable
< 5 days/week	Ref
5–7 days/week	0.59	0.46–0.76	< 0.001
Fruit
< 5 days/week	Ref
5–7 days/week	0.69	0.57–0.82	< 0.001
Betel nut
Never	Ref
Current	0.94	0.58–1.52	0.79
Chronic renal failure
No	Ref
Yes	1.46	1.03–2.08	0.04
Heart failure
No	Ref
Yes	1.59	1.26–2.01	< 0.001
Liver cirrhosis
No	Ref
Yes	1.50	0.88–2.58	0.14
Stroke
No	Ref
Yes	1.72	1.44–2.05	< 0.001
Cancer
No	Ref
Yes	1.45	1.14–1.86	0.003

^aDose-response relationship between numbers of tooth loss and nasogastric feeding was evaluated using the trend test (P for trend = 0.01)
Abbreviations: CI confidence interval

ISSN: 1471-2318