Methods: Twenty percent of the patients hospitalized for more than 1 year in the 14 psychiatric institutions in Israel were selected at random. Two trained and calibrated dental practitioners checked the dental status of the patients according to WHO criteria. The dental caries experience (DMF-T index) was calculated and demographic and medical data were retrieved from the files.
Results: Of the 301 patients examined (179 men, 122 women, average age 51.8 years) 235(88%) had at least partial natural dentition. The average DMF-T score was 20.1 (out of 32). The caries component accounted for 2.3 of the DMF-T, the missing teeth component 16.9 and the restored teeth component only 0.9. There was an adverse correlation between age and treated caries. The average number of carious and missing teeth was higher than in the healthy population but shows improvement in relation to former studies. No all-edentulous patients had dentures.
Conclusions: These findings confirm the benefit from intervention program instituted about 10 years ago to improve dental health care in high-risk, difficult-to-treat, psychiatric chronic inpatients and the vital need to ensure dental treatment in view of the reform in psychiatric services in Israel