Domiciliary dental care among homebound older adults: A nested case-control study in Japan

Improving the availability of dental care is essential to maintain older adults' general health and wellbeing. Domiciliary dental care is a feasible alternative. The present study aimed to investigate factors affecting the use of domiciliary dental care among home-dwelling dependent older adults.

A retrospective nested case-control study was carried out. We identified long-term care recipients who used home care services between April 2012 and March 2014 using Japan's nationwide long-term care service claim database. One-to-one case-control matching was carried out between those with and without domiciliary dental care, based on sex, age and the time home care service use was started. We carried out multivariable conditional logistic regression analyses to assess various factors associated with using domiciliary dental care.

We identified 3 377 998 eligible homebound long-term care beneficiaries aged ≥65 years. Of these, 278 302 (8.2%) received domiciliary dental care. Factors associated with a higher probability of receiving domiciliary dental care were: higher level of care need (odds ratio [OR] 1.99, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.93-2.06), exemption from out-of-pocket payment (OR 1.35, 95% CI 1.32-1.39]), living in a group home (OR 7.93, 95% CI 7.71-8.16), using other domiciliary services such as physician visits (OR 3.15, 95% CI 3.08-3.22) and a large number of dental clinics providing domiciliary dental care in their municipality (OR 1.74, 95% CI 1.70-1.77). Significant barriers to receiving domiciliary dental care were living alone (OR 0.64, 95% CI 0.62-0.66) and dementia (OR 0.89, 95% CI 0.88-0.91).

Our findings might help to improve the availability of dental care in this population. Geriatr Gerontol Int 2019; 19: 679-683.