In support of geriatric dentistry at the undergraduate level.

In October 2005, I participated in a geriatric dentistry workshop sponsored by the British Columbia Dental Association (BCDA). The topic of my presentation was delivering dental care to the patient and a facility in a mobile setting. I believe the reason that this workshop was successful was that the faculty of dentistry at the University of British Columbia, with the support of BCDA, has begun an undergraduate program in geriatric dentistry and a mobile dental clinic that services long-term care facilities in the Greater Vancouver Area. This program was initiated by Drs. Chris Wyatt and Michael MacEntee, who have researched and written extensively about delivering dental care to the geriatric population, a growing segment of our society. Two other undergraduate geriatric dentistry programs are taught in Canada, one at the University of Manitoba and the other at Laval University. Many good quality programs are also offered in the United States. One excellent program offered at the University of Iowa, under the leadership of Drs. Ronald Ettinger and Howard Cowen, deals with the important relationship between medicine and dentistry in the geriatric setting. More dental schools in Canada need to introduce undergraduate students to the problems of oral health care in the geriatric population. Dental students need to learn about the relationship between medicine and dentistry as early as possible in their education. Geriatric dentistry is on the cutting edge in its approach to this topic. Geriatric dentistry gives dental students practical experience that exposes students to this interrelation of medicine and dentistry. For the most part, geriatric patients have underlying medical conditions. They are more likely to be on multiple medications or suffer from cognitive problems that complicate their treatment and need to be dealt with. Elderly patients who have been receiving high-quality professional care, such as crowns, fixed bridge work, removable prosthodontics, cosmetic or restorative dentistry, and implants, should not suffer simply because they enter a nursing home or long-term care facility, or become homebound. Unlike medicine, which is mandated by law to assign one or more medical people to each institution as medical directors, dentistry has failed at all levels to provide similar care for these patients. The dental profession has not prepared itself for this serious problem, which is evident only when patients are examined in nursing homes. Such examinations reveal failing fixed bridge work, rampant decay, dentures that do not fit and cause infections, hypertrophied tissue, root tips that are infected and hidden under tissue, undetected cancer and much more that is undiagnosed. Because the dental profession has not thought it important to educate the allied professions, nurses and doctors do not understand the extent of destruction that neglect of oral health can cause. Lack of oral hygiene, yearly examinations and treatment can destroy oral health tissue and cause loss of teeth, which can have a severe In Support of Geriatric Dentistry at the Undergraduate Level