When we think about well-being among older adults, how often do we think about their oral health as being an important component? In reviews of risk factors for low well-being among older adults, oral health is never explicitly mentioned, although other health conditions and disease states are often discussed. This is despite untreated caries (dental decay) being the most prevalent of all health conditions in global burden of disease estimates.
General health and functioning are important components of well-being, especially among older adults. Even though oral health is an integral part of general health, it is often neglected in gerontological research. For example, in all the research papers published in The Journals of Gerontology, Series A and B, the term ‘oral health’ is mentioned in the titles only five times.
Even when well-being research takes disability among older adults into account, common measures of disability such as limiting health problems or Activities of Daily Living (ADL) do not explicitly refer to disabling conditions related to oral health. For example, one of the ADL questions is about problems people have with cutting their food. This is different from a common problem that most older adults face which are problems with chewing food due to missing teeth. Another common oral health problem among older adults is the pain and discomfort associated with ill-fitting dentures, which can also decrease well-being. For the full article click here
from health IT caucus http://ift.tt/1MDwFqP
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment