A national survey of oral health in U.S. adults reported
that more than 41% of Americans aged 65 and older were
totally edentate.13 Older edentate persons are supposed to
have a lower risk of developing serious dentally derived systemic
diseases than dentate patients, but the present results
suggest that even in older edentate patients, fever, pneumonia,
and death from pneumonia were observed as often as
in dentate patients, and oral care in edentate patients produced
benefits similar to those in dentate patients