Promotion of Professional Oral Care for Hospitalized and Home-Care Patients

To provide the intensive oral care to the hospitalized and home-care patients, we discuss the current status and improving measures of promoting oral care in Sendai city. The questionnaire survey among the dentists who are working at the dental offices, revealed that one-fourth of the dentists has experiences of visiting to the patient home, other medical facilities, and the nursing homes for the elderly. Half of the dentists who had no experiences to visit patients out of their dental offices, considered that they had prepared ready to go out from their offices by the requests for oral care on demand. To promote the professional oral care for the hospitalized and home-care patients, it would be helpful to open the liaison offices to share information and to collaborate between the medical and dental facilities each other about the needs of oral care.