Construção de um indicador de saúde bucal para a população idosa da cidade de Manaus-AM

Abstract

The oral health condition of the elderly Brazilian population is marked by the high prevalence of tooth loss and edentulism, a reflection of socioeconomic inequalities throughout life. This fact leads to the need to review oral health indicators that are measured only as clinical (dental) measures. Thus, the present study aims to build and validate a multidimensional indicator of oral health conditions for elderly people in the city of Manaus- AM. The data used for this purpose will be collected in a population-based cross-sectional study conducted with 667 randomly selected elderly people aged 65 to 74 years, living in the city of Manaus/ Amazonas/ Brazil. Initially, the participants' cognitive function was assessed using the Verbal Fluency Test (VFT) and those who did not reach the minimum score were excluded. As for the variables of oral health conditions, they were collected through an intraoral clinical examination to calculate the Decayed, Missing, and Filled Teeth (DMFT), Community Periodontal Index (CPI), and Periodontal Insertion Loss Index (PIP). Information on socioeconomic data, and the GOHAI (Geriatric Oral Health Assessment Index) were also collected. Exploratory factor analysis was performed to synthesize these variables and facilitate the construction of multidimensional indicators. The analysis generated three factors that jointly explained 72.9% of the model's variance (KMO = 0.749, p < 0.001 for Bartlett's test of sphericity). These three factors were reduced to the “sum” variable, calculated according to the sum of the factor scores per individual. The median of this new variable was the reference value for categorizing oral health condition into “favorable” or “unfavorable” categories. Criterion validation of the indicator produced was performed by associating it with other variables that were not included in the model but have already been described in the literature. The indicator was able to aggregate several dimensions of oral health into a single measure and was found to be reproducible for the construction of other health indicators.