Oral Health Related Quality of Life and Prosthetic Status among Institutionalized Elderly from the Bucharest Area: A Pilot Study

The aim of the study was to assess the oral health related quality of life (OHRQoL) of elderly in care homes, one of Romania’s most vulnerable social categories, to correlate it to sociodemographic, oral health parameters, and prosthodontic status. Therefore, a cross-sectional study was performed on 58 geriatrics divided into 3 age groups, who were clinically examined and answered the oral health impact profile (OHIP-14) questionnaire. Very high rates of complete edentulism in the oldest-old subgroup (bimaxillary in 64.3%; mandibular in 64.3%; maxillary in 85.7%), and alarming frequencies in the other subgroups (middle-old and youngest-old), statistically significant differences between age groups being determined. The OHIP-14 mean score was 14.5. Although not statistically significant, females had higher OHIP-14 scores, also middle-old with single maxillary arch, single mandibular arch, and bimaxillary complete edentulism, whether they wore dentures or not, but especially those without dental prosthetic treatment in the maxilla. A worse OHRQoL was also observed in wearers of bimaxillary complete dentures, in correlation with periodontal disease-related edentulism, in those with tertiary education degree, and those who came from rural areas. There were no statistically significant correlations of OHRQoL with age, total number of edentulous spaces or edentulous spaces with no prosthetic treatment. In conclusion, despite poor oral health and prosthetic status of the institutionalized elderly around Bucharest, the impact on their wellbeing is comparatively moderate.

An application of microscopic investigation on extracted premolar with dyschromia, related to the components of endodontic sealer

The aim of this study was an assessment of the overall optical characteristics changes in volume of the dentin, after the diffusion of the chemical components included in the sealer throughout the endodontic space, in order to demonstrate the discoloration effect of the endodontic sealer on tooth crown of a recently extracted maxillary premolar. Thin sections were studied using the polarized transmitted light microscopy and under a stereomicroscope, operating in transmitted light and reflected light. There were performed serial images of magnitude 40×. Each image was covered by a grid aimed for microscopic sections volumetric measurements. Therefore, all the serial images were merged and resulted a global image of the entire section surface. Thus, we have analyzed a total of three sections of the same tooth. Based on these sets of images, there were made estimations of the areas affected by colorations, determinations that can be extrapolated to total tooth areas, in terms of volumetric color change of dentin. The proportion of low coloristic infiltrated dentin was very close to the deeply impregnated dentin and the overall impregnated dentin covered half of the total dentin analyzed area.