Dental practice implications of systemic diseases affecting the elderly: a literature review

According to the 2000 Brazilian Census, elderly people are over 14 million habitants. In consonance with what occurs worldwide, the Brazilian population is growing older and the elderly are expected to be over 33 million by the year of 2025. Although geriatric dentistry has already been recognized as a dental specialty, there is a lack of specialists in this branch of dentistry, which means that general dentists and other dental specialists will be dealing more and more with these patients. Aged individuals are commonly affected by a number of systemic diseases that have an impact on their oral health, such as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus, oral cancer, osteoporosis, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Dental professionals must be prepared to treat properly these special patients. Therefore, the aim of this review article is to instruct dentist about these highly prevalent diseases affecting the elderly, as well as discuss their oral manifestations and dental implications, in order to propose a safe and adequate oral health care for these patients. Here we will shortly describe the diseases' etiology, main signs/symptoms and medical treatment and will discuss about how to proceed with dental treatment in patients suffering from these pathological conditions.