The paradox of better subjective oral health in older age

A selection of abstracts of clinically relevant papers from other journals. The abstracts on this page have been chosen and edited by John R. Radford.

Abstract

The young are '...poor planners, unenthusiastic savers but voracious consumers' and 'expected more in all aspects of life, including health and health care'.

Main

Slade GD, Sanders AE. J Dent Res 2011; 90: 1279–1285

The elderly seem to accept that dental disease is part of ageing. This is an explanation as to why in this study, only 18.7% of older people considered issues associated with eating and/or appearance were of concern, compared with 46.7% of young people, although all subjects were dentate denture-wearers. These and other findings were based on 1) a simple telephone interview of 14,092 Australian adults, 2) a dental examination carried out on some of this cohort and 3) a detailed OHIP-14 (self-completed questionnaire exploring 'adverse impacts of the teeth, mouth, or dentures on daily life'). This paradox of better subjective oral health in the elderly has also been observed for general health.