Oral health Oral health in primary care

A systematic review

Abstract

The provision of oral health services tries to follow the WHO concept of “health for all”, through primary health care, however, minorities such as the homeless, the elderly and people with disabilities in general are not sufficiently assisted. for oral health care. The number of dental surgeons has been increasing significantly year after year, however, despite this, the difficulties in access, mainly for financial reasons, do not make the number of professionals an advantage. The curative model that is advocated in many services, not giving priority to preventive care in oral health, makes the system dysfunctional. The user's first contact with Primary Care should be educational, exposing the possibilities of treatment and how they can benefit from the system, providing treatment opportunities for everyone. The objectives of this review are to contribute to learning about oral health in primary care, making it known and enabling understanding; and understand more about the current scenario and the difficulties of this sector so important in our society. For the composition of the review, a comprehensive search was carried out on the main online data search platforms. Oral health directly affects quality of life, and primary care has enormous potential to reduce rates of oral disease. Advice on diet, oral hygiene, smoking cessation and fluoride supplementation, application of fluoride varnish, and identification of dental disease must be routine to have practical effect.

Keywords: Dentistry. Oral health. Primary care.