Providing Effective Dental Care for an Ageing Population

BACKGROUND: Effective treatment produces improved outcomes from the patient and clinician perspectives. The focus of this article is effective dental care for ageing patients. This concept must be embraced through research, education and, finally, clinical care. RESEARCH: Older adults often carry a higher burden of health and socioeconomic issues that limit their participation in clinical trials. This leaves providers to extrapolate care decisions from research in other age groups. However, electronic health records allow researchers to converge extensive medical, pharmacologic, and dental data, thereby including older patients in research questions. EDUCATION: Dental and medical educators are tasked with teaching skills specific to ageing patients. This requires teaching and active use of concepts such as whole health and patient-centred outcomes. PROVISION OF CARE: For ageing patients, effective care is precision care (the right care to the right patient at the right time). Clinicians must be trained and then actively participate in the interdisciplinary approach to assure good oral health for all older patients.