Elderly access to dental treatment: A primary health care context

One of the most important principles of the Primary Health Care is access to assistance and treatment. In some situation, the elderly people need specific access conditions to face an oral health treatment. The family health care program, which is a public health government program, has Family-Health-Centers that allow the Brazilian family to be attended in these local Centers in order to get acquainted with primary oral health procedures related to health promotion. The objective of this study is to evaluate elderly-social-representation about the conditions that hinder them to go to the dentist. As a qualitative approach design, it was interviewed 149 elderly, which were followed at a Family-Care-Centre at University of São Paulo. All of these elderly related that they did not have the habit to go to the dentist and they were interviewed at their homes. The interviews were digitally recorded and than transcript. The speeches were analyzed according to Content Analysis. As the results, all the categories raised from the elderly speech were structured in four central categories: 1. absence of time (24,1%); 2. elderly uses total prosthesis so it is not necessary to go to the dentist (67,7%); 3. fear to go to the dentist (4,7%); 4. No anyone to take them to the Dentist (3,5%). It was concluded, to the studied population, that the principle of access in Primary Health Care is well developed in the local Centre, because difficult to go the community dentist was not a problem to the local elderly people. This population does not think about oral health promotion, and using dentures reflects the idea that it is not necessary to take care of the others organs in the oral physiological system. This study suggests local oral health elderly education to create a consciousness toward the importance of oral health.