Geriatric Oral Health and Quality of Life Assessment
Summary
Ageing populations face a high prevalence of dental caries, periodontal disease and tooth loss, which jointly undermine mastication, nutrition and psychosocial well-being. Assessment of oral health in older adults extends beyond clinical indices to encompass oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL), capturing pain, functional limitation, psychological discomfort and social participation. Tools such as the Geriatric Oral Health Assessment Index (GOHAI) and the Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-14) quantify subjective experience and enable monitoring of interventions aimed at preserving natural teeth, improving prosthetic care and maintaining functional dentition. Recent advances have focused on validating these measures across diverse populations, refining cut-off scores to detect clinically relevant change and integrating oral health assessment with general health metrics through structural modelling. Global demographic shifts underscore the need for scalable, psychometrically robust instruments that inform public health policy, guide resource allocation and support personalised treatment planning. Interdisciplinary collaboration now links oral function to nutritional status, cognitive health and overall quality of life, reinforcing the central role of geriatric dentistry in healthy ageing frameworks.
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Geriatric Oral Health and Quality of Life Assessment publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in geriatric oral health and quality of life assessment across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Geriatric Oral Health Assessment Index (GOHAI): A questionnaire measuring oral function, pain and psychosocial impact in older adults to assess oral health-related quality of life.
Oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL): A multidimensional construct reflecting the influence of oral health on daily function, psychological state and social interaction.
Functional dentition: The number and distribution of teeth, natural or prosthetic, required to maintain adequate chewing ability and support nutritional and psychosocial health.
References
- Psychometric Properties of General Oral Health Assessment Index Across Ages: COSMIN Systematic Review. Value in Health (2024).
- New measure of functional tooth loss for successful Oral ageing: a cross-sectional study. BMC Geriatrics (2023).
- The relationship between oral health status, loneliness, and sleep quality among the migrant elderly following children in Weifang, Shandong Province, China: A comparative analysis on different migration types. Frontiers in Public Health (2023).
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