Oral Health Screening Instruments for Non-dental Professionals in Assessing Older People’s Oral Health (Care) Status

Objectives: Co-morbidity, polypharmacy and potential difficulties in self-care create challenges for older people in maintaining their oral health, but also for the organization and delivery of oral health care services. Non-dental professionals may have a substantial role in the screening and triage of oral health care in older people when dental care gets less accessible due to limitations by old age. The aim of this scoping review is to identify, overview and critically appraise existing literature for psychometric performance and applicability regarding screening instruments assessing oral health (care) in older people by non-dental care professionals.
Methods: PubMed, Embase.com and Cinahl (via Ebsco) were systematically searched and articles retrieved were screened on title, abstract and full-text using Covidence. No limitations on type of study or date of publication were set. If applicable, articles were critically appraised using Guidelines for Reporting Reliability and Agreement Studies (GRRAS). Data were extracted and tabulated. Results from retrieval, selection, appraisal and data extraction were based on consensus of two independent reviewers.
Results: Publications on oral health screening instruments for older people are mainly descriptive studies of follow-up from a selected cohort. Several oral health screening instruments were found of which some focused on elderly with cognitive problems, elderly in hospitals and long term care facilities. Most instruments had overlap for some oral health items assessed. The screening instrument items which are not assessed or are assessed differently were oral hygiene status, swallowing function, halitosis and pain. Moreover they differ in referral thresholds. The Oral Health Assessment Tool (OHAT) seems to be the most researched screening instrument and is the only one including assessment of oral pain.
Conclusions: Most evidence on psychometric performance and applicability screening instruments for oral health in elderly concerns OHAT. Findings on psychometric performance and applicability of OHAT and other instruments will be presented in detail on the conference.