Gustatory interface for operative assessment and taste decoding in patients with tongue cancer

Taste, a pivotal sense modality, plays a fundamental role in discerning flavors and evaluating the potential harm of food, thereby contributing to human survival, physical and mental health. Patients with tongue cancer may experience a loss of taste following extensive surgical resection with flap r...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2024-10, Vol.15 (1), p.8967-10, Article 8967
Main Authors: Wang, Xiner, Bai, Guo, Liang, Jizhi, Xie, Qianyang, Chen, Zhaohan, Zhou, Erda, Li, Meng, Wei, Xiaoling, Sun, Liuyang, Zhang, Zhiyuan, Yang, Chi, Tao, Tiger H., Zhou, Zhitao
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/166/985
639/166/987
692/699/3020/1665/3016
9/30
Adult
Aged
Cancer
Disease management
Female
Head & neck cancer
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
multidisciplinary
Oral carcinoma
Plastic Surgery Procedures - methods
Quality of Life
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Surgical Flaps
Taste
Taste - physiology
Taste Buds
Tongue
Tongue Neoplasms - pathology
Tongue Neoplasms - surgery
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Taste, a pivotal sense modality, plays a fundamental role in discerning flavors and evaluating the potential harm of food, thereby contributing to human survival, physical and mental health. Patients with tongue cancer may experience a loss of taste following extensive surgical resection with flap reconstruction. Here, we designed a gustatory interface that enables the non-invasive detection of tongue electrical activities for a comprehensive operative assessment. Moreover, it decodes gustatory information from the reconstructed tongue without taste buds. Our gustatory interface facilitates the recording and analysis of electrical activities on the tongue, yielding an electrical mapping across the entire tongue surface, which delineates the safe margin for surgical management and assesses flap viability for postoperative structure monitoring and prompt intervention. Furthermore, the gustatory interface helps patients discern tastes with an accuracy of 97.8%. Our invention offers a promising approach to clinical assessment and management and holds potential for improving the quality of life for individuals with tongue cancer. Cancer patients suffer from dysgeusia. Here, the authors propose a gustatory interface for operative assessment and taste decoding, offering potential to improve the quality of life of individuals suffering from tongue cancer.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-024-53379-y