Abstract
In spite of the increase in the number of elderly people, the relationship between oral health and general health in this age group is unclear. We studied 80 residents in a home for the elderly (65 females, 15 males) with regard to their state of health and oral circumstances. They were from 65 to 97 years of age and from 23kg to 70kg in weight. We divided them into three groups based on physical factors: senile dementia, physical disease and functional disease. We also grouped them according to the peculiar traits of the diseases: four stages for senile dementia (normal, subnormal, predementia and dementia), two groups for physical disease (heart disease and other disease), and two groups for presence or absence of functional disease caused by cerebral vascular accident (CVA). We used Hasegawa's Simple Inspection Scale for senile dementia. Two subjects (2.5%) were found to have senile dementia. As for physical disease, almost half of them suffered from heart disease. With regard to functional disease, about one-third of them had problems resulting from CVA. Our main concern was for the oral condition of these elderly people. Accordingly, we studied how senile dementia, physical disease and functional disease affected the subjects' vigor for life, masticatory efficiency, oral care and the number of their remaining teeth. Inestimated their masticatory efficiency, we used Yamamoto's table, because many of the subjects had dentures. As for oral care, we classified the subjects into five groups according to our care code which runs from 0 to 4, corresponding to the number of untreated teeth.
The results wers as follows:
1. As senile dementia progrens, subjects tend to lose their interent in living, and their normal efficiency of masticating decreanes.
2. In many cases, those with physical disease, especially heart disease, did not receive any dental treatment, even though they had oral problems. However, many of them were quite efficient at masticating, in spite of their physical disease.
3. Those who had functional disease, especially coused by CVA often did not receiveany dental care when necessary. They also tended to masticate less well. However the numbe of subjects with remaining teeth increased in the functionally-diseased groups.
4. The ratio of those with untreated teeth was highest among subjects with functional disease. In other words, functional disease makes it difficult for elderly people to have dental treatment.
One more point we may add is that the food in the home was specially prepared for elderly people, and accordingly the softness of the food was taken into account in the study. Masticatory abililty may vary according to the cooking methods. Therefore, we feel that further research is neede on elderly people who live under different circumstances from the subjects studied in this report.
