Oral health promotion of children from disadvantaged families and of institutionalised elderly in Craiova, Romania

Objectives: To assess whether dental students could help carers to improve the oral health of institutionalized children and elderly people living in an orphanage and elderly people living in a residential home in Craiova, Romania.

Methods: After training, 55 fifth-year dental students made 14 weekly visits to an orphanage and an old person's home to try to improve carers' oral health knowledge and oral hygiene (OH) procedures and to monitor progress in one child and one old person. At baseline two local dental school staff members examined each child and old person’s oral health using WHO (1997) criteria and the Simplified Oral Hygiene Index (OHI-S). After 14 weeks the Simplified Oral Hygiene Index (OHI-S) was assessed again. The carers’ knowledge of OH and attitudes to providing and the students’ knowledge and attitudes were assessed at baseline and again after 14 weeks with a questionnaire.
Results: All 54 children (mean age 13.02 years, mean DMFT 2.41) living in the orphanage participated and their mean OHI-S improved (1.12 to 1.07, p>0.05). Forty eight old people (mean age 78.1 years) participated, of whom 5 (10%) were edentulous. Their mean OHI-S improved (1.57 to 0.99, p<0.001). The mean self-rated oral health knowledge marks of the carers made a statistically highly significant improvement from a baseline mean of 3.2 (sd1.14) (64%) to 4.8 (sd.0.57) (96%) (p<0.001) after 14 weeks. and their score for attitude improved significantly 7.2 (sd.1.5 ) to 8.0 (sd.0 ) (p<0.001) Students noted changes in their understanding of the needs of the carers, children and elderly people. Their perception of their capability to provide OH education or train others to do it, or their inclination to do it remained substantially unchanged.

Conclusions: With suitable management, senior dental students can play a role within residential homes for children and old people by training carers and improving the residents’ oral hygiene.