The interest in saliva increased, further, with the finding that saliva is filled with hundreds of components that might serve to detect systemic diseases and/or act as an evidence of exposure to various harmful substances and provide biomarkers of health and disease.[9],[10],[11],[12] Many researchers have made use of
sialometry and sialochemistry to diagnose systemic illnesses, monitoring general health, and as an indicator of risk for diseases creating a close relationship between oral and systemic health.
Our study has some limitations because anatomical and functional abnormalities of salivary glands were not properly investigated, using clinical methods, in particular,
sialometry. Some authors described that salivary gland aplasia may lead to variable dysfunctions, including reduction on the salivary flow rate and alterations on the salivary composition [13, 19].
Bussoloti Filho, "Evaluation of the concordance of
sialometry and salivary glands scintigraphy in dry mouth patients," Brazilian Journal of Otorhinolaryngology, vol.
Sialometry was performed using the spitting method.
Unstimulated whole saliva was measured by
sialometry (20).
77.9% patients had xerostomia based on
sialometry.
Sialometry is a reliable tool for clinical evaluation of xerostomia.
Additional testing may include
sialometry to measure saliva flow and parotid scintigraphy, a nuclear medicine test, to detect parotid adenomas (Chang et al., 2010; Kurien & Scofield, 2011).
Some methods have been proposed for
sialometry of unstimulated and stimulated whole saliva (UWS and SWS) from major glands [11-13], but fewer studies have specifically investigated minor salivary glands flow rate.
Sialometry and sialochemistry: diagnostic tools for Sjogren's syndrome.
The researchers also measured saliva flow rates using standardized
sialometry collection techniques.
Ekstrand, over 239 patients affected by BP, found the
sialometry to be a reliable prognostic examination to identify patients with good or poor facial outcomes at 12 months, when a powerful secretory stimulus is used.
Methods for determining salivary gland dysfunction include salivary flow rate measurements (
sialometry) and analysis of salivary composition (sialo-chemistry) analyzed by using radioimmunoassay (RIA), for which whole saliva (oral fluid) is most frequently used.
