Dentition and Nutritional Status in the Institutionalized Elderly Population

Objectives: Prevalence of elderly population in Malaysia is expected to increase up to 15% by 2030. Increasing elderly population would give challenges to the country including medical and dental health care problems. This study focusing on the elderly in the resident care to identify the association between the dentition and their nutritional status by assessing their food selection and oral health as the number of teeth, occluding pairs, the denture status, BMI and risk of malnutrition. Methods: Out of 19 elderly nursing homes invited, only 9 homes responded and willing to participate in the study. Patients who were 60 years and above with ASA I, II and III were included in the study. Patient must also able to answer the questionnaires, agree to have dental examination and the height and weight could be measured for BMI calculation. Mini Nutritional Assessment Short Form (MNA-SF) was employed to identify risk of malnutrition. The data was analyzed by SPSS statistical software. Results: Our data showed from a total of 155 respondents only 58 people have fulfilled the criteria set for the study, 20 of them were fully edentulous while the rest were partially dentate. The percentage of respondents with no difficulty in chewing and having normal MNA-SF scoring was 63.8%. Pearson correlation coefficient showed that there was no statistical significant in the relationship between difficulty in chewing and risk of malnutrition (p=0.61). There was also no significant relationship between number of teeth present and difficulty in chewing (p=0.15). Correlation between denture status and difficulty in chewing also showed no significant association with p=0.40. Conclusion: Within limitation of the study, it can be concluded that the study in general showed no association between the number of dentition and the nutritional status among the elderly population in the nursing homes around PJ area.