Caries experience and use of dental services in rural and urban adults and older adults from central Chile

Abstract

Adults and older adults from the Maule Region showed severe dental damage from caries. Although rurality and use of services do not seem to affect caries experience, they are associated with differences in fillings and missing teeth.

.Oral Health Impact Profile in elderly Chileans in southern Chile.

“…These results are consistent with those described by Quinteros et al 6 showing an association between the number of dental visits and higher rates of cavities and missing teeth due to the lack of dental care provided by the Chilean public health system and to the fact that the EP population over 60 years does not have any type of private dental health insurance and is restricted to only one dental care program. Private dental care is unaffordable for most people, whose retirement pensions are usually very low 6 .…”

“…This finding differs from the results presented by Leon et al 5 , in which older people had a lower impact on the OHIP-14Sp scale, indicating a greater acceptance by this age group to deteriorating health and lower life expectancy. One of the effects seen in this data is the increased loss in the number of teeth in older ages, even with one third of the population over 65 years 3 being edentulous due to lack of dental care during childhood, and poor oral health promotion and prevention actions, which are currently available 6 However, this limiting condition can be significantly improved by using implant prosthetics. Reports by Jofre et al 15 have shown through the OHIP-14 scale a significant improvement in the quality of life in those elderly patients with mandibular implants and implant-retained, muco-supported implants, sggesting a basic or preliminary rehabilitation approach for this group of patients.…”

“…As a result, this instrument allows to quantify quality of life in relation to the perceived state of oral health in EP from different regions of Chile. Local evidence suggests that EP usually consider poor oral health condition as a normal consequence of the aging process 6 . Thus, the analysis of quality of life associated with oral health yield epidemio-logical data that can be compared with data from other Latin American regions, facilitating the implementation of public health policies to improve the quality of life of EP 1 .…”

Socioeconomic Factors and Caries in People between 19 and 60 Years of Age: An Update of a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies

“…All of the studies were published between 1975 and 2016 [21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81]. Twenty new studies were included in this update [26,27,28,29,31,38,39,40,44,45,…”

“…Twenty new studies were included in this update [26,27,28,29,31,38,39,40,44,45,47,49,50,53,59,61,66,67,79,81]. The language was predominantly English (96.7%).…”