A Systematic Review of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology Found in Senior Citizens: 2001-2014

Objectives: The increased longevity of the population due to improvements in living conditions and access to health care reflects the higher number of elderly. This group represents an increased and significant part of the population that requires a special attention paid by their health professionals, to their needs . Therefore, knowing the prevalence of oral diseases that affect the elderly is the first step to create a culture of prevention and health promotion.
Methods: Thus, the aim of this study was to identify the prevalence of oral and maxillofacial pathologies that affect the elderly patients through casework files of the Oral Pathology Laboratory of the Faculty São Leopoldo Mandic (Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil) , between the years 2001 and June 2014.
Results: From a total amount of 13,605 histopathological diagnoses, 3,053 were performed in elderly patients ( 22.44% of total) and 1748 ( 57.25 %) in female and 1302 ( 42.75 %) were male. The mean ( ± SD) age was 68.4 ± 6.8 years. The histopathological results were divided into 12 categories (disease of the oral mucosa, odontogenic cysts and tumors, salivary gland disorders, benign and malignant neoplasms , etc.) highlighting the disease of the oral mucosa (42.22 %) , followed by malignant neoplasms ( 13.9 %) and benign ones( 9.7% ).
Conclusions: It can be concluded that more attention from health professionals for early diagnosis of oral disease in the elderly, especially in relation to malignancies, is necessary, since the number of cases found is significant (the second more frequent category).