Fluoride and Restoration Experience in Adults with Intellectual/developmental Disabilities

Objectives: This study described the fluoride experience and the need for restorations in subjects with intellectual/developmental disabilities (I/DD).

 

Methods: This cross-sectional study utilized clinical information recorded at the time of treatment at the Tufts Dental Facilities (TDF) in electronic health records.  The study group was 4221 I/DD dentate adults ≥ 20 years of age receiving a periodic oral exam between April 1^st, 2009 - March 31^st, 2010. Oral health and treatment information was collected from axiUm and recorded in MS Excel. The compiled database was converted to SAS data sets for analysis (Version 9.2).

 

Results:    Of the 4221 subjects who had a periodic oral exam during the study year, 2456 were male (58.19%) and 1765 were female (41.81%).   The mean (SD) age was 47.52 (13.55) years.  Only 53 (1.3%) of subjects received no fluoride treatments; 52.5% of the cohort (2214/4221) had at least one restoration.  The mean (SD) number of fluoride treatments each year was 4.61 (2.89) and the mean (SD) number of restorations performed was 1.49 (4.07).  Fewer than 10% of the cohort required more than 7 restorations. There were 9782 total restorations performed in this population, but more than half of those were performed in less than 10% of the population.

Conclusions: We found that the overwhelming majority of our cohort received at least one fluoride treatment during the study and, on average, subject received them every 3 months.  On average 1.5 restorations were performed each year per subject.  Individuals requiring more than 7 restoration were a minority.  More than half of those were performed in less than 10% of the population.  While the results of this cross-sectional study may suggest that the disease burden of caries on this population is great, a paucity of subjects required the most extensive interventions.