Self-perception of oral health in non-institutionalised elderly of Piracicaba city, BrazilObjectives: To associate the self-perception of oral health with sociodemographic, clinical, quality of life and geriatric depression, evaluating what influence in the self-perception of the elderly and the importance to the oral health. Background: The current demographic transition and poor oral health of the elderly deserves particular attention, especially the impact of oral health on the quality of life. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, we evaluated 371 elderly, aged 60 years or more, adscript to Health Family Units, Piracicaba city, Brazil. Clinically, the indexes decayed missing filled teeth (DMFT), CPI and Use/Need of Prosthesis (WHO/99) were used and evaluated by means of instruments such as the selfperceived oral health [geriatric oral health assessment index (GOHAI)], quality of life (SF-36) and geriatric depression (Geriatric Depression Scale). The statistical analyses were carried out by means of univariate analysis of chi-square and Fisher's exact (a = 0.05) and multiple logistic regression analysis. Results: The mean age was 67.35 (2.8), with a mean DMFT of 28.5 (4.8) and a positive GOHAI score (>30). Most were women (63.3%), between 60 and 70 years (72.2%), married (60.4%), had just the elementary school (75.5%) education. Around 80% used some removable prosthetic. The results were associated with characteristics of self-perception of oral health and were significative of schooling (OR = 2.46) and the emotional aspects of quality of life (OR = 0.30). Over 20% of the sample had traits of depression, and these results were statistically significant (OR = 1.65) when associated with the GOHAI scores. Conclusion: Educational and emotional aspects and geriatric depression are factors that influence the positive self-perception of oral health of elderly people of Piracicaba USFs. These results represent that education, feelings and behaviours deserve special attention in their oral health, thereby approaching the self-perception of real dental condition.

Introduction and objective: To describe, analyze, and critically review the methodology employed in dental epidemiological research available on electronic databases, evaluating their structures according to Strobe and Consort initiative. Material and methods: ISI Web of knowledge, Scopus, and Pubmed electronic databases were selected for literature research, gathering publications in dental epidemiological area using the following designs: cross-sectional, cohort, case-control, descriptive, experimental, and quasi-experimental. Subsequently, five specific dentistry journals were selected and had their abstracts content analyzed under Strobe and Consort statement criterion. Results: From a universe of 10,160 articles from Pubmed (the greatest number), only 3,198 could be classified according to their epidemiological design by the electronic database searching tool. The most common designs were cross-sectional, cohort, case-control, descriptive, experimental and quasi-experimental publications, showing a tendency towards occurring bias and confounding factors in literature research due to missing words in papers structure. Even though Consort and Strobe initiatives have been accomplished since 2001 and 2004 respectively, some publications are not suitable for their checklist. Conclusion: Consort and Strobe statements must be strengthened by dental journals, editors and reviewers to improve the quality of the studies, attempting to avoid any sort of bias or confounding factors in the literature research performed by electronic database.