Oral health evaluation of patients with diagnosed Alzheimer's Disease in São José dos Campos-Brazil

Abstract

Considering the increase of Brazilian elderly population, special attention should be given to the high incidence of dementia in this age group. Among the dementias that affect elderly patients, Alzheimer’s disease is a very common etiology factor. Since there is no known etiology for Alzheimer’s disease, there is also no effective treatment and the management of the alteration includes several physical, emotional and behavioral cares. The oral health care is often neglected because of the most compromising systemic and behavioral alterations. This fact leads to a situation in which oral health should negatively impact the quality of life among Alzheimer’s patients. So, the aim of this project is to evaluate oral health among elderly Alzheimer’s patients in the city of São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil. The oral health risk will be evaluated by the Oral Health Risk Assessment – OHRA and the patient’s collaboration capacity for dental treatment will be evaluated by the Index to Dental Management of patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Both questionnaires will be applied to patients or to the care provider. The oral examination will be done by using wood tongue examiner and a portable spot light. The questionnaires and oral examinations will be carried out by Miriane Carneiro Machado. As both questionnaires were translated from English to Portuguese, and there is no validated version, we undergone a translation and back-translation to compare the results with the original questionnaires. Ten volunteers were interviewed and well-comprehend the questionnaires. The Cronbach’s alfa will be also used to validate the Portuguese version of the questionnaires. The answers of the questionnaires will be tabulated to make a statistical summary of the results. The OHRA questionnaire will allow evaluating how many patients need dental treatment and the Index to Dental Management of patients with Alzheimer’s disease allows evaluating the impact of Alzheimer’s disease on the type of dental treatment to be done. Possible statistical relationships among the questions will be evaluated by qui square test and Equality Two Rations test. (AU)