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Discontinued dental attendance among elderly people in Sweden

AIM: Our objective was to study the loss of dental attendance and a possible age trend among patients aged ≥65 years in Sweden. Regular dental check-ups are considered to be an important factor in maintaining oral health. Approximately 80% of the adult population in Sweden are enrolled in a regular...

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Autores principales: Grönbeck-Linden, Ingela, Hägglin, Catharina, Petersson, Anita, Linander, Per O., Gahnberg, Lars
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4916796/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27382538
http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/2231-0762.183101
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author Grönbeck-Linden, Ingela
Hägglin, Catharina
Petersson, Anita
Linander, Per O.
Gahnberg, Lars
author_facet Grönbeck-Linden, Ingela
Hägglin, Catharina
Petersson, Anita
Linander, Per O.
Gahnberg, Lars
author_sort Grönbeck-Linden, Ingela
collection PubMed
description AIM: Our objective was to study the loss of dental attendance and a possible age trend among patients aged ≥65 years in Sweden. Regular dental check-ups are considered to be an important factor in maintaining oral health. Approximately 80% of the adult population in Sweden are enrolled in a regular check-up system; however, dental practitioners often find that older patients attend fewer check-ups. Old people may naturally lose contact with dental services as they move to special housing or die. In this systematic study, these factors were investigated and used as exclusion criteria. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Data were collected for all patients (n = 4759) aged 65 or older from the electronic journal system in 3 large public dental clinics in 3 communities. Their dental records for the years 2004–2009 were studied longitudinally by 1 person at each clinic; 1111 patients were excluded (patients died during study period, wanted emergency care only, obtained special dental care allowance, moved from the community or moved to special housing, or left the clinic for another caregiver). The statistical analyses were performed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 21 (IBM). RESULTS: Of the 3648 patients (1690 men and 1958 women) included in the study, 13% lost contact with their dental service over the course of the study (10% of those were aged 65–79 and 21% ≥80). The decrease in regular dental contact had a statistically significant association with increasing age (P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: A considerable number of older people living independently or with moderate supportive care in their own homes lost contact with dental service despite enrolment in a recall system.
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spelling pubmed-49167962016-07-05 Discontinued dental attendance among elderly people in Sweden Grönbeck-Linden, Ingela Hägglin, Catharina Petersson, Anita Linander, Per O. Gahnberg, Lars J Int Soc Prev Community Dent Original Article AIM: Our objective was to study the loss of dental attendance and a possible age trend among patients aged ≥65 years in Sweden. Regular dental check-ups are considered to be an important factor in maintaining oral health. Approximately 80% of the adult population in Sweden are enrolled in a regular check-up system; however, dental practitioners often find that older patients attend fewer check-ups. Old people may naturally lose contact with dental services as they move to special housing or die. In this systematic study, these factors were investigated and used as exclusion criteria. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Data were collected for all patients (n = 4759) aged 65 or older from the electronic journal system in 3 large public dental clinics in 3 communities. Their dental records for the years 2004–2009 were studied longitudinally by 1 person at each clinic; 1111 patients were excluded (patients died during study period, wanted emergency care only, obtained special dental care allowance, moved from the community or moved to special housing, or left the clinic for another caregiver). The statistical analyses were performed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 21 (IBM). RESULTS: Of the 3648 patients (1690 men and 1958 women) included in the study, 13% lost contact with their dental service over the course of the study (10% of those were aged 65–79 and 21% ≥80). The decrease in regular dental contact had a statistically significant association with increasing age (P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: A considerable number of older people living independently or with moderate supportive care in their own homes lost contact with dental service despite enrolment in a recall system. Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd 2016 2016-05-30 /pmc/articles/PMC4916796/ /pubmed/27382538 http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/2231-0762.183101 Text en Copyright: © 2016 Journal of International Society of Preventive and Community Dentistry http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.
spellingShingle Original Article
Grönbeck-Linden, Ingela
Hägglin, Catharina
Petersson, Anita
Linander, Per O.
Gahnberg, Lars
Discontinued dental attendance among elderly people in Sweden
title Discontinued dental attendance among elderly people in Sweden
title_full Discontinued dental attendance among elderly people in Sweden
title_fullStr Discontinued dental attendance among elderly people in Sweden
title_full_unstemmed Discontinued dental attendance among elderly people in Sweden
title_short Discontinued dental attendance among elderly people in Sweden
title_sort discontinued dental attendance among elderly people in sweden
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4916796/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27382538
http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/2231-0762.183101
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