Abstract
Recently various healthcare workers have taken steps to improve the oral health care in medical institutions, welfare facilities and even in the home. In this study, the presence of opportunistic infectious agent was examined in relation to the subject's general status to analyze its risk factors and adequate interventions.
The subjects in this study were 28 aged persons requiring care (mean age: 82.3±7.6 yrs) who had received a visit for dental health care. At that time, motivation was promoted by giving easily understandable instructions for carers in the use of standardized oral care as well as optical methods using an oral camera.
By using an ‘opportunistic infectious agent-detecting kit, ’ ten kinds of opportunistic infectious agent commonly isolated from the oral cavity and/or the upper air-way of infection-sensitive, which are often encountered in the daily clinical environment, were sent to an authorized laboratory for qualitative analysis. The general status was classified into three groups: of ADL factors, oral hygiene factors and oral functional factors. In consequence, few singly isolated strains were found. But the Pseudomonas aeruginosa complex was detected more frequently. In particular, a group of Pseudomonas aeruginosa was revealed to correlate with some of the oral hygiene functional factors. The factor of reducing the opportunistic infectious agent is the statistically-derived “Good Tooth Brush manipulation” (p<0.01).
It was therefore suggested that oral health care may be greatly helped by bacteriological examination. This examination can indicate whether the oral flora is composed of complex or simple bacteria, with special reference to the related factors including systemic oral hygiene ones.
