Abstract
The puropse of this study is to describe and evaluate the dental service for the elderly in Japan. The subjects were 158 institutionalized (IE) and 107 non-institutionalized elderly (NIE). They were from 60 to 92 years old, and were all heslthy elderly.
The investigation was carried out by interview based on questionnaire to ascertain the subjects' the intraoral subjective symptoms and food acceptance.
The results were as follows;
1. Subjective symptoms; According to questionnaire, the intraoral sublective symptoms (Where do you have oral problems?) of all the subjects were in teeth (30.5%), dentures (28.4%) and periodontal tissue (12.4%), However, 5.6% of IEand 47.7%of NIE had notcomplain of oral problems. Toodhache was found in 6.2% of IEand 3.7% of NIE. The bleeding syrnptoms from gingiva at tooth-brushing were found 6.2% of IEand 3.7% of NIE.Swelling of the gingiva was detected by 4.2% (IE) and 4.9% (NIE) respectively.
2. Subjective assessment of dentures; In the upPer jaw, 48.5% of IEand 34.3% of NIE reported satisfaction with their dentjres, 42.3% of IE and 28.2% of NIE were satisfied with their dentures in the lower jaw.
3. Food acceptance; Half of subjects indicated a good for chewing ability.On the other hand, 18.0% of IE and 19.8% of NIE had chewing problems.
Only 26.8% of IE and 19.8% of NIE reported that chewing is on both sides (Do you chew on both sides or do you prefer to chew only on one side?).
These findings from our survey indicated that there is no significant difference between IE and NIE for the oral sublective symptoms and food acceptance. This conclusion suggest that the oral inspection should beundertaken and that a concrete food index should be established.
