Oral health and dementia

The significance of maintaining oral health and, more importantly, of continually striving to educate our patients of it, cannot be underestimated. There’s no denying that it can be frustrating to see patients day in and day out who brush their teeth ‘when they get time’ or who ‘keep meaning to floss’. As healthcare professionals we simply mustn’t lose heart. As we know only too well, the repercussions of poor oral health can be severe.

In addition to more immediate problems such as gingivitis and periodontitis, there is an ever growing list of chronic disorders elsewhere in the body that correlate with oral disease. Either a significant factor in the origin of these conditions, or an exacerbating influence, research has demonstrated relationships between periodontal disease and cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, diabetes, adverse pregnancy outcomes, and dementia.

Dementia is the collective term for the deterioration of intellectual faculties, such as memory and cognitive ability, resulting from diseases or conditions of the brain. A number of risk factors have been identified; however the chances of developing dementia increase significantly as we age. One in 50 people in the UK between 65 and 70 years of age develop some form of dementia, compared to one in five people aged over 80. This is likely to be due in part to a range of conditions more prevalent in older people, such as higher blood pressure, weaker immune system and afflictions such as heart disease and stroke. Having said that, there are over 17,000 people under the age of 65 with dementia in the UK (also known as ‘working age dementia’, ‘early onset dementia’ or ‘young onset dementia’). This figure, however, is considered a conservative estimate and potentially a third of the true number of cases.