Atraumatic dental treatment among Finnish elderly persons

There is an increase in elderly dentate adults who will retain more of their natural teeth, and thus the demand for restorative dental services among them will be high. In Finland, systematic dental care for old people has not been organized. Health centres have mainly targeted the development of dental care for children, adolescents and young adults. With this background, atraumatic restorative treatment (ART) was seen as a complementary procedure in oral health services for the elderly. It was tested in 1997-1999 in Helsinki among 119 old people (mean age 72.5 years) living in their homes and receiving community-based support services. Patients were satisfied with having dental examination and oral health education at home. The ART fillings (n=33) were provided for 21 persons and depuration for 56. After 1 year, 25 fillings (58%) could be evaluated: 68% of the fillings were assessed as being good, 11% as having a slight marginal detect and 16% as having unacceptable marginal defect, and one filling was totally lost. In conclusion, ART is an appropriate approach in dental care for the elderly. However, more testing should be completed to find out how the screening could be organized to make the dental home visits more cost-effective and less time consuming.