Dental status and satisfaction with oral function in a sample of community-dwelling elderly people in Japan

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of dental status on oral function and satisfaction among a group of independently living elderly persons in an urban area of Japan. The study sample consisted of participants of the Senior Citizens' College from 1995 to 1999. Their dental status and oral satisfaction were measured by a questionnaire. The number of usable questionnaires was 3967, or 80.8% of the total sample. The mean age of the subjects was 66.5+/-4.3 years, and 52.2% were male. Twenty-nine percent of them had a natural dentition, and 7.0% were edentulous in both jaws. The prevalence of edentulism in the study sample was significantly lower (p < 0.01) than that for the national survey. Overall, 66.4% of the subjects were satisfied with their ability to chew, 56.2% with the appearance of their teeth, 63.1% with their ability to speak clearly, and 76.5% with their ability to taste food. For complete-denture wearers, the greatest dissatisfaction was with speech (28.5%); however, for the RPD wearers, it was with chewing ability (21.7%). Sixty-one percent of complete-denture wearers reported that they were satisfied with their chewing ability, but only 11% of them could eat all three of the evaluated foods without difficulty. The multiple stepwise logistic regression analyses showed that both dental status and self-assessed general health had a significant association with dissatisfaction with all four oral functions and self-assessed impairment of chewing ability. There were significant associations between the elderly subjects' dental status and oral function.