Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 20, 2026
Oral Health Assessment by Lay Personnel for Older Adults
Published on: February 2, 2020
[The adaptation for a health centre of a functional screening process aimed at elderly people]
I Gorostiaga Roa1, A M Lerma Cancho, I Martín Lesende
1Centro de Salud de Ortuella, Unidad Docente de Medicina de Familia y Comunitaria de Vizcaya.
Objective:
To find out what the functional capacity of people aged 75 or over is and to adapt the screening questionnaire for further use.
Design:
Descriptive crossover study.
Setting:
Health Centre.
Patients And Other Participants:
People aged 75 or over registered at the Health Centre (HC). 78 people were chosen by systematic sampling. There were 18 losses.
Measurements And Main Results:
A screening questionnaire was administered to make a clinical, functional and social assessment and record problems and performances. The average time taken per questionnaire was 28 minutes (SD 6.9). 76.7% completed it at the HC. There was a notably high percentage of problems detected (21.8%): 209 out of the 960 possible boxes for problems. Over 40% of these problems--with the exception of boxes for economic status and mobility--had previously either not been identified or were not treated. Hearing, sight and teeth were the most frequent complaints (33.3%, 51.6% and 51.6%, respectively) and were unidentified or untreated in 85%, 67.7% and 80.6% of cases.
Conclusions:
We consider that the systematic installation of this adapted screening method would be useful.
