Case Report
A Case of Buccal Abscess from an Impacted Wisdom Tooth in an Elderly Person with Malnutrition
Yuki Kojima,1 Mizuha Kojima,2 Kazuhiro Sakaguchi,2 and Yutaka Sakaguchi2
1 Department of Physiology, Tokyo Dental College, 2-9-18 Misaki-cho, Tokyo 101-0061, Japan
2Sakaguchi Dental Clinic, 1-20-5 Kasuga, Chuo-ku, Chiba 260-0033, Japan
Correspondence should be addressed to Yuki Kojima; yukikojima@tdc.ac.jp Received 24 August 2016; Revised 19 October 2016; Accepted 25 October 2016 Academic Editor: Pia L. Jornet
Copyright © 2016 Yuki Kojima et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
We report a case of buccal abscess caused by an impacted wisdom tooth in an extremely elderly person with malnutrition. The patient was a 94-year-old man, who complained that he had found it hard to open his mouth and that his cheek had been swollen for the previous 2 weeks. He had a shallow oral wound caused by an improperly fitting denture; however, the wound became infected. We performed incisional drainage of the abscess under local anesthesia. The swelling disappeared and he was able to open his mouth 55 mm. The elderly have a high risk of healing failure of injuries and it has been reported that infection in a host in a compromised state is severely intractable. This elderly patient was in a compromised state because of malnutrition. Cases such as this one will increase as the elderly population increases. Dentists need to consider the quality of life of patients with a longer life expectancy and should offer patients several treatment options before their general condition deteriorates.