Elderly population diagnosis related to oral primary health care

Introduction: Population diagnosis is a very important tool to provide actual community oral status. An elderly population requires specific oral heath education in order to promote oral heath and prevent some diseases more prevalent on the aged people. Objectives: The present study aimed to evaluate the elder attitudes toward oral health care based on denture and teeth hygiene and observe associated variables which were related to the issue. Furthermore, this study aimed to construct the oral hygiene profile of the studied elder population. Methods: We interviewed all the aged people (n=261) filled at a Family-Care-Centre at the School-of-Medicine at University-of-São Paulo at Ribeirão Preto (FMRP-USP). The population was separated in dentate and edentate, total or partial prosthesis wearing. All the population was mentally and physically independent. We used EpiInfo software to perform the database and develop the statistical analysis to observe the possible association based on the Chi square test (p< 0.05). Results: 61.3% of the female related that brushes their teeth 3 times a day, but 45.8% of this same gender related that they do not use dental floss. Only the variable tooth-brushing was statistical associated to age (p= 0,038). 82.6% (male) and 85.5% (female) of the studied elder used water, brush and tooth-paste to clean their prosthesis. This was the most representative variable associated to age (p=0.088). Conclusions: We concluded to the studied population that women are more carefully devoted toward oral health care and using tooth-brush and tooth paste is the most spread method to oral prosthesis hygiene. In the same situation the dentate elder do not use the dental floss because they think that it was something necessary only to young people. We suggest that a hard oral health education should be developed at this population to increase the empowerment toward oral health care.