Treatment accessibility for physically and mentally handicapped people--a review of the literature.

This paper presents a review of the literature concerning the access of physically and mentally handicapped people to dental care, and the attitudes of dentists towards them. It is particularly concerned with access for those who are housebound, or restricted to wheelchairs. Accessible dental care facilities and information about them may have been difficult to locate in the United Kingdom. This situation may improve in the near future as family health services authorities have data obtained from dentists registering with them under the new National Health Service contract, and general dental practice leaflets are required to provide information on wheelchair access. Transport systems may severely limit the ability of some handicapped people to travel to otherwise accessible surgeries. Professional and societal attitudes towards handicapped people are ambivalent. It has been shown that professional attitudes towards handicapped people, and willingness to treat them, increases with training in this field. At present, this training has a low priority in many dental schools.