Recent Developments in Oral Frailty in the Elderly

Abstract

Oral frailty has been recently suggested as a novel construct defined as a decrease in oral function with a coexisting decline in cognitive and physical functions, which is associated with many adverse events in older adults, such as frailty, sarcopenia, disability, and mortality. We reviewed the definition, symptoms, diagnosis criteria, assessment tools of oral frailty in older people, and summarized its recent research status as well as possible influencing factors, then suggested that future research on oral frailty in older Chinese adults could be carried out in aspects involving developing oral frailty assessment tools appropriate for older Chinese people, implementing survey studies on oral frailty, enriching study designs and contents and enhancing oral frailty intervention studies.

Keywords

• frailty|aged|oral frailty|oral health|oral and maxillofacial frailty index|root cause analysis|review