Frequency of Systemic Diseases and Oral Lesions Among the Institutionalized Elderly Subjects in the Northeast of Iran.

Abstract

With ageing, the number of systemic diseases and the consumption of drugs increase. Moreover, some oral lesions, especially denture-related lesions, are commonly observed. The purpose of this study was to determine the frequency of systemic diseases and oral lesions in the elderly in the Mashhad Geriatric Institutes. Institutionalized elderly people, who could cooperate for oral examination, enrolled in this descriptive cross-sectional study. The frequency of oral lesions and their systemic diseases were recorded in the self-made checklist. For statistical analysis, Student's t-test and Chi-square test were utilized. The significance level was considered to be 0.05. During the study, 224 elderly subjects with a mean age of 75.63 ± 11.22 years were evaluated. The mean duration of residency in the elderly nursing centres was 1.87 ± 1.37 years. Hypertension, Alzheimer's disease and diabetes were the most common systemic diseases, and about 47% of the patients had two or multiple concurrent diseases. Among participants, 97.1% had at least one oral lesion. The most common oral lesions were fissured tongue (75%), sublingual varicosity (68.3%) and hairy or coated tongue (38.4%), respectively, which are classified as normal variations of oral mucosa. The most common pathological lesions were denture stomatitis, frictional keratosis and lichenoid reactions. Regarding to the high frequency of oral lesions among ageing people, regular examination of the oral mucosa for early detection of oral lesions and appropriate treatments is recommended.