Investigating oral health's relationship with dependency and cognitive state.
Oral hygiene is poor in the institutionalised elderly. There are problems regarding the oral care of residents having poor mobility or cognitive impairment.
Cross-sectional study involving 135 participants (mean age 85.7, SD 8.8 years) in two categories: nurses doing tooth cleaning and residents doing tooth cleaning. Those cleaned by nurses were categorised as co-operative or unco-operative. The oral hygiene status, presence of caries, retained roots and denture-related stomatitis were recorded.
Of the participants, 70% had only natural teeth. The prevalence of caries was 28%. A significant correlation showed that having more teeth gave a poorer Simplified Oral Hygiene Index (OHI-S) (p = 0.018). The number of retained roots increased with the severity of cognitive impairment (p
