[The need for gerodontology in education and research]

The realisation that oral care for elder patients is very desirable and also necessary is only a few decades old. The earliest research was carried out in 1978. In the Netherlands and Flanders, research on oral care for the elderly began a few years later: the first doctoral degree in the field of gerodontology was awarded at the University of Nijmegen in 1989, after which more followed. In 2005, the BENECOMO was established, a Belgian-Dutch consortium in which geriatric dentists and specialists in healthcare for the elderly cooperate closely in research. A consequence of the cooperation has been, among other things, that gerodontology is now a broad professional field, which takes into consideration the importance of biomedical, psychological and social factors and a multidisciplinary approach, aiming at prevention.