TELEPHONE INTERVIEW VALIDATION FOR ORAL HEALTH ASSESSMENT IN ELDERLY PEOPLE

Abstract

Objectives: This study aimed to develop and validate, through the oral clinical examination, an instrument of oral health assessment for elderly subjects using a telephone interview. Methods: Three hundred four elderly participants of the Multidimensional Elderly Study of Porto Alegre participated in a telephone interview related to their oral health status. After the interview, 80 elderly were randomly invited and 45 effectively came for a dental exam at Institute of Geriatric and Gerontology of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul. The telephonic interview and the oral examination collected information on: the number of teeth, use of prosthesis, satisfaction with the chew and satisfaction with the appearance of teeth. The agreement between the answers of both evaluations was verified by the correlation coefficient (tooth number) and the test of agreement of Kappa (other variables). Results: The correlation of the number of teeth between both exams was of 98%. Use of upper or lower total prosthesis presented perfect agreement in both evaluations (100%), while the agreement on the use of partial prosthesis were slightly lower with of 94,9% for partial superior and 84,7% for partial inferior prosthesis. The validation in related to the satisfaction with the chew and the appearance of teeth had resulted in substantial agreement having been the satisfaction in relation to the chew of 78% and the satisfaction with the 68,7% appearance. Conclusion: The results lead to accept the information as similar, proving that the elderly self-assessment of some oral health aspects can be an effective instrument in epidemiological studies.