Salivary tests associated with elderly people's oral health

The saliva constitutes essential condition for the individual's health.

Identify the relation of the salivary flow and saliva pH with medicine use and oral discomfort in elderly.

Cross-sectional study with 68 elderly living in a long staying institution. Salivary tests were performed based on Bo Krasse's methodology. For pH, the Universalindikator - Merck tape was used. A questionnaire was applied, organising data through Software SPSS version 17. Pearson's qui-square distribution, Fisher's exact test and t-test for paired data were used, with significance level of 5% and confidence interval of 95%.

Among the 68 elderly (average of 70.4 years, SD ± 7.27), 80% showed normal pH. The rate of salivary flow was as follows: very low, 32.3%; lowered, 41.2%; and normal, 25.5%; 30.9% reported dry mouth; 22.1% problems with taste; 17.6%, dysphagia; and 14.7%, burning mouth. 76.5% used medicines. There was statistical significance between medicine use and dry mouth (p = 0.015). They showed an association between salivary flow and medicine use (p = 0.048), feels dry mouth (0.018) and difficulty to swallow (p = 0.046), and saliva pH without stimulation and feels dry mouth (p = 0.003), difficulty to swallow (p=0.006) and burning mouth sensation (p = 0.014).

Low salivary flow and saliva pH interfere on elderly people's health and medicine use influences on results.