PREVENTION FOR THE ELDERLY PATIENTS – STOMATOLOGY EDU JOURNAL

FDI EASTERN EUROPE CONTINUING EDUCATION PROGRAMME

PREVENTION FOR THE ELDERLY PATIENTS
Alexandre Mersel

The aging of the elderly population is a dramatic demographic fact. One of the most important challenges of the dental profession in the coming years will be in providing oral care to geriatric patients. The new trend is that the elderly will have more retained teeth and that their expectation will be greater. On the other hand the increase of their life–span will increasingly affect their medical status, therefore the profession has to develop an adapted prevention management and treatment strategy. The main field of action will be: Prevention of the Dental caries A special preventive protocol and a conservative approach is necessary in order to achieve a maximum of teeth when aging “20 teeth for the eighties”. Oral cancer Oral cancer has a high morbidity and mortality rate. The 5-year survival rate is 75% for local lesions but only 17% for those with distant metastasis. Oral cancer constitutes 13-16 % of all cancers, therefore early detection, and preventive attitudes and actions are compulsory. The profession must start with an education program both for the practitioner and the patients. Salivary hypo function With aging a great decrease of the saliva flow is noted. Aside from the normal gland hypo function more than 700 medications are known to cause dry mouth. Bad taste, bad breath and more root caries are the direct consequences. Prevention and control of the salivary pH is indicated. Periodontal Prevention With the loss of periodontal attachments, bad habits (smoking), poor conservative restoration and poor prosthodontic rehabilitation, the elderly are often subject to chronic periodontal diseases. This situation will finally lead to the loss of their teeth, in a way that step by step they will be edentulous. Edentulism is now recognized by the WHO as a real disability. Special attention should be taken in order to provide a large preventive treatment including, of course, the education and motivation of these patients.

GREEN OPEN ACCESS

The Stomatology Edu Journal (Stoma Edu J) is one of the first Green Open Access journals in the field of dental medicine, publishing well-established authors, but equally committed to encouraging early career researchers and professionals alike to publish their work after a non-partisan, objective, double-blind rigorous peer-reviewed process. A Green Open Access (GOA) journal means that all content is freely available to the user or his/her institution without charge. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. Our aim is to publish in the shortest possible time frame and ensure the rapid dissemination of your work via our journal page, but also through our indexing partners (Dimensions, EBSCO, KUDOS, Google Scholar, Scilit)…(read more)

STATEMENT

STOMATOLOGY EDU JOURNAL (Stoma Edu J) is a new international dental journal whose main purpose is to inform researchers, educators, graduates, postgraduates and practitioners about the latest trends in the field, which followed, would bring immediate and lasting benefits to the patients; and about opinions of the most authorized specialists on what is best in current practice, for the good of both, patient and dentist.
STOMATOLOGY EDU JOURNAL (Stoma Edu J) is a peer-reviewed, open access international dental journal to be database indexed, meant to contribute to the development and completion of the medical training of practitioners as Dr. Greene Vardiman Black stated: “the professional man has no right to be other than a continual student”.
Open access journal, means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.