Alzheimers disease: A dental approach

Abstract

Introduction: Maintaining oral health becomes a challenge when Alzheimer's disease progresses to the intermediate and late stages. Objective: To analyze the literature on Alzheimer's disease and its relationship with dentistry in high impact journals, with a focus on etiology, diagnostic methods, treatment, dental clinical characteristics and dental management. Methodology: The search was carried out in the databases PubMed, SCOPUS and Google Scholar, using the terms "Alzheimer's", "etiology", "diagnostic methods", "treatment", "dental clinical characteristics" and "dental management", together with logical Boolean operators OR and AND. Results: It is important to know that the etiology of Alzheimer's disease is uncertain; the most widely used diagnostic methods for this disease are biomarkers. There is no drug capable of alleviating Alzheimer's disease. It is very common to find different oral diseases due to the lack of hygiene presented by patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease, so it is important to give education to their caregivers to perform oral hygiene. Conclusion: Currently, the issue of the effects of Alzheimer's disease on dentistry has been neglected. It is important to pay more attention to it and to educate caregivers about the possible oral diseases involved in the future as a consequence of poor oral care.