[Health consciousness and oral hygiene of the aged in homes and hostels].

Two hundred inhabitants of rest- and nursing homes--on an average age of 81 years--have been interrogated into their laymen's knowledges of dentistry, their habitual dental hygienics, and their opinion about dental treatment. The majority of these senior probands did not realize any connection between an insufficient dental hygiene and the origin of both caries and periodontal disease. They considered the oral hygiene being a matter of bodycare, not of medical prevention. The actual status of the teeth and the evaluation of the present dentures distinctly indicate that dental care to the old people needs to be greatly improved.