A focus on oral health in an ageing world

In June, the framework for maintaining the oral health of our ageing population  was published. This supports proactive and sustained oral healthcare across the later stages of life, with a focus on prevention, early intervention and maintaining oral function regardless of care setting.

I would like to thank Mili Doshi, Emma Hall-Scullin, Amy Marshall and Nicola Pearson for their time and expert contributions to development of the framework.

As a dentist who has spent a large part of my career delivering domiciliary care for older people in care homes and their own homes, this is a topic that is important to me and represents a key part of my portfolio as Deputy Chief Dental Officer for England.

I did my first domiciliary visit to a care home when I was three years qualified and was shocked with what I saw - patients with wall-to-wall plaque and debris, multiple mobile and carious teeth, dentures that were often not removed and implants failing. The care teams were struggling to find the time and hadn't been trained to deliver appropriate mouthcare to these residents. With limited treatment options in a domiciliary setting, I couldn't understand why we were not focussed more on using evidence-based prevention and early intervention for this vulnerable cohort.

My NIHR funded PhD explored the feasibility of delivering fluoride varnish and 2800ppm fluoride toothpaste to care home residents. We determined that care homes are often too late as an intervention point and it is imperative that prevention and early intervention is embedded sooner in the ageing journey, especially for those with behavioural and medical complexity.

Alongside the framework, we have been supporting the Royal College of Surgeons to set out clinical guidelines for clinicians and the British Society of Gerontology, British Association for the Study of Community Dentistry and the British Society of Special Care Dentistry to update domiciliary guidelines. Many thanks to all those on these working groups who have given up their time to contribute to these documents.

We hope that these documents will help commissioners and clinicians to shape the care delivery offer to all older people and ensure our population can live longer with better oral health. To hear more about oral health and ageing from experts in the field, register for our next CDO webinar  on Thursday 10 September from 6-7.30pm.

Kind regards,

Rakhee Patel, Deputy Chief Dental Officer England.

Read the framework for maintaining the oral health of our ageing population here.