Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Jun 14;21(1):363.
doi: 10.1186/s12877-021-02302-x.

Oral status of older people in medium to long-stay health and social care setting: a systematic review

Juan Antonio Ruiz-Roca  1 , Dora Martín Fuentes  2 , Francisco J Gómez García  3 , Yolanda Martínez-Beneyto  4
Affiliations

Oral status of older people in medium to long-stay health and social care setting: a systematic review

Juan Antonio Ruiz-Roca et al. BMC Geriatr. .

Abstract

Background: Older patients who spend long periods hospitalized or those who are in a situation of institutionalization represent a risk group in this regard, as many of them suffer a degree of dependence and need help to perform the basic tasks of personal care. It is therefore important to learn more of the oral health status of this group of patients in order to make a proper assessment of the situation and to develop protocols for its management. The purpose of the study was to conduct a systematic review to ascertain the oral health status of older people patients admitted to institutions or hospitalized for a long period of time.

Methods: a systematic review of the literature published in two different databases (PubMed, Embase and Cochrane Library) was carried out, with 12 different combinations of keywords based on the following selection criteria: studies published in the last 5 years, in English and/or Spanish and/or Portuguese, with samples of ≥30 patients, performed in patients older than 65 years, admitted to any type of institution and/or hospital center for at least 7 days and in which the state of hard and/or soft tissues of the oral cavity were evaluated in some way. The selected articles were subjected to a thorough analysis.

Results: The search strategy covered 1.014 articles: 689 from Pubmed and 325 from Cochrane Library. After applying the eligibility criteria, five articles were selected for our review. The level of evidence of the articles was, a sample of 773 patients most of them were women with an average age older than 70 years old.

Conclusions: The oral health of patients aged more than 65 is worse than that of the rest population. Long hospital stays or being institutionalized in a residence makes this group susceptible to a worsening of their oral health status. It is necessary to develop protocols for the oral health care of these patients, accompanied by training programs for the personnel responsible.

Keywords: “Older inpatients”; “Oral health”; “Oral status”; “long term hospitalization”; “long term inpatients”; “older hospitalized patients”.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

We declare that we have no proprietary, financial, professional or other personal interest of any nature or kind, in any product, service and/or company that could be construed as influencing the position presented in the manuscript entitled “Oral Status of older people in medium to long-stay health and social care setting: a systematic review”,

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Flow diagram of the search processes and results
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. UN. United Nations. Global affairs. Aging..2018 http://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/ageing/. Accessed 15 January 2019.
    1. INE a: Statistics National Institute. Demography and population. Population figures and demographic censuses 2018 http://www.ine.es/prensa/cp_e2018_p.pdf Accessed 20 March 2019.
    1. INE b: Statistics National Institute. Demography and population. Population figures and demographic censuses. Population projections. Latest data.2018 https://www.ine.es/prensa/pp_2018_2068.pdf . Accessed 25 April 2019.
    1. WHO. World Health Organization. World report on aging and health. 2015. https://www.who.int/ageing/publications/world-report-2015/es/. Accessed 2 February 2019.
    1. Acevedo Alcaraz E, Alcaraz Baños M, Benito Martínez J, Robert Muir B, Navalon VC. Situation of our institutionalized elderly in residences and needs for their social integration. Azarbe Revista Internacional de Trabajo Social y Bienestar. 2014;3:279–282.

Publication types