Oral health status and complete denture status of independent-living Singaporean elderly residing in a community home

Abstract

Aim

Past studies have examined the oral health status of elderly Singaporean adults residing in long term care facilities and living in residential housing but no oral health research has been conducted on elderly Singaporeans residing in community homes. The aim of this paper is to report on the oral health status and complete denture status of a group of free living (community dwelling) elderly in Singapore from the AWWA Community Home for Senior Citizens, and investigate the relation between the clinical findings and demographic data.

Materials and methods

This research used a cross-sectional design and was conducted in the month of December 2011. Consenting residents of the AWWA home who were over the age of 60 participated in this study. Sampling strategy was census. Two calibrated interviewers collected demographic information from the participants and four calibrated dentists conducted extra-oral and intra-oral soft tissue examinations along with assessment of dentition, periodontal and denture status.

Statistical analysis

All data were input into Microsoft Excel 2010^™ and analysed in SPSS 21.0^™. Descriptive analysis and bivariate analysis were performed on the demographic factors and other variables of interest. The Spearman׳s test, Mann–Whitney U and Chi-Square test were used to examine the correlation between the clinical findings and age, gender and education level respectively.

Results

Among the 70 participants, two subjects (2.9%) had complete dentition, 34 (48.6%) were partially dentate, and 34 (48.6%) had no teeth. The mean number of teeth among the partially dentate participants was 11.28 while the mean number of anterior, posterior and total occlusal contacts were 1.61, 2.17 and 3.78 respectively. The mean number of decayed teeth (DT) and filled teeth (FT) were 2.81 and 0.25, giving a mean DFT score of 3.06. The mean Root Caries Index was 0.13. Periodontal examination revealed that only 5 (13.9%) individuals had healthy periodontal tissues, while 2 (5.6%) had the highest score of 1, 9 (25.0%) had the highest score of 2, 11 (30.6%) had the highest score of 3 and 7 (19.4%) had the highest score of 4. Amongst the partially dentate, 14 had dentures and 20 had none. There were 34 edentulous participants and 23 had at least one denture while 11 did not have any complete dentures. The most frequent unsatisfactory finding for complete dentures was inadequate retention of the mandibular dentures. When the dentures were grouped into those that were satisfactory and those that had at least one unsatisfactory factor, 11 of the 26 maxillary dentures and 17 of the 23 mandibular dentures fell to the latter category. Analysis revealed that there was a correlation between age and the number of teeth with a correlation coefficient of −0.43 (p=0.01) and age with the mean DFT, −0.33 (p=0.05).

Conclusion

The findings of this study revealed a high treatment need for this group of elderly.