Dental hygiene
14th International Conference on Dental Health
September 14-16, 2016 Philadelphia, USA

Franol Asfaw Wakwoya

Shegole Health Center, Ethiopia

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Dentistry

Abstract:

Dental hygiene is essential to general health and well-being at every stage of life. A healthy mouth enables not only nutrition of the physical body, but also enhances social interaction and promotes self-esteem and feeling of well-being. The mouth serves as a window to the rest of the body, providing signals of general health disorder. For example, mouth lesion may be the first sign of HIV infection, pale and bleeding gums can be an indicator of skeletal osteoporosis and change in tooth appearance indicate bulimia or anorexia. Dental diseases are the most widespread chronic disease, despite being highly preventable. The common risk factor that dental diseases highly shares with other chronic diseases are diet, tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption, hygiene, injuries, control and stress, etc. Dental disease has been associated with number of systemic conditions. Though the biological interaction between it and other medical conditions are not fully understood, it is clear that major chronic disease namely cancer and heart disease share common risk factor. Dental conditions have an impact on overall health and disease. Bacteria from the mouth can cause infection in other part of the body when the immune system has been compromised by disease or medical treatment. Systemic conditions and their treatment are also known to impact on dental hygiene (e.g. reduce saliva flow, alter balance of microorganisms). Recognition that dental hygiene and general health are interlinked is essential for determining appropriate dental hygiene care programs and strategies at both individual and community level by adopting common risk factor approach for dental hygiene.

Biography :

Email: Gjaleta@gmail.com