Oral health status among long-term hospitalized adults: A cross sectional study.

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1 Department of Periodontology, School of Graduate Dentistry, Rambam Health Care Campus, Haifa, Israel
2 Medical Corps, IDF, Medical Corps, IDF, Jerusalem, Israel
3 Department of Community Dentistry,Hadassah School of Dental Medicine, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.178v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Dentistry, Epidemiology, Evidence Based Medicine, Health Policy, Public Health
Keywords
oral health, institutionalised hospital care, edentulousness and oral hygiene
Copyright
© 2013 Bilder et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Cite this article
Bilder L, Yavnai N, Zini A. 2013. Oral health status among long-term hospitalized adults: A cross sectional study. PeerJ PrePrints 1:e178v1

Abstract

Background: Many Long-Term Care (LTC) patients suffer from dental neglect due to difficulties in achieving appropriate dental professional care; although oral health has important influence on the quality of life among them. Dental care of the long term institutionalized adults is often limited to emergency and first aid care and there is insufficient data regarding oral health status in this population.Objectives: To describe the oral health status of the long-term hospitalized adults. Materials and methods: A cross-sectional study including clinical oral examinations was carried out among institutionalized LTC patients aged 18 and older in a geriatric - psychiatric Hospital in Israel. Main outcome measures were: edentulousness, presence of dentures, mucosal findings, number of teeth, number of functional teeth, level of dental hygiene and, dental caries. Results: Subjects’ mean age was 65 years; 31.3% of the patients were edentulous, and only 14% had partial or full dentures. Only 17.2% were caries free. Females had significantly higher number of caries cavitation than men (p=0.044). The number of caries cavitation was higher among patients with higher plaque scores (p<0.001) and when taking Clonex (p=0.018). Number of residual teeth in mouth was higher in the low plaque score group (p<0.001). Carious teeth percentage was higher among the high plaque score group (p<0.001)

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