JURNAL INTERNASIONAL KEBIDANAN 2020-2023 UNIVERSITAS KEDOKTERAN GUILAN VOLUME 31 ISSUE 4.
JOURNAL OF HOLISTIC NURSING OF MIDWIFERY.
Oral Health Status in the Iranian Elderly: The Role of Nutrition Status and Health Literacy

JURNAL INTERNASIONAL KEBIDANAN 2020-2023 UNIVERSITAS KEDOKTERAN GUILAN VOLUME 31 ISSUE 4.
JOURNAL OF HOLISTIC NURSING OF MIDWIFERY.
Oral Health Status in the Iranian Elderly: The Role of Nutrition Status and Health Literacy

Aging, Health literacy, Nutritional status, Malnutrition

Introduction: Oral health plays an important role in determining food intake patterns,
meeting nutritional needs, and consequently keeping the health of the elderly and their
quality of life. Health literacy is also one of the biggest determinants that significantly impacts
disease prevention in the elderly.
Objective: This study aimed to determine oral health status and the relationship between health
literacy and nutritional status in the elderly referring to health centers in Tabriz City, Iran.
Materials and Methods: This research is a cross-sectional analytical study performed on
300 older people in Tabriz in 2020. Data collection tools included the geriatric oral health
assessment index, seniors in the community: risk evaluation for eating and nutrition,
health literacy for Iranian adults, and demographic information questionnaire. To analyze
the data, descriptive statistics were used to sort out the data. The Shapiro-Wilk test was
used to check the data normality, and then simple and multiple linear regression analyses
were performed to evaluate the relationship between variables and control the effect of
intervening variables. The level of significance in this study was considered less than 0.05.
Results: The Mean±SD age of the elderly was 69.7±6.7 years. The number of men and women
participating in this study was equal. A total of 257 people (85.7%) were married. The results
showed that the oral health status of 51% of the elderly was below mean, 65.33% of the
elderly were illiterate, and 69.33% were severely malnourished. Based on the results of
multiple regression, the nutritional status of the individuals was a predictor of the oral health
score of the elderly (Β=-13.5, 95% CI; -11.3, -15.69, P=0.001). So, people with malnutrition,
mildly malnourished, and severely malnourished had lower oral health scores than healthy
individuals with the control of the other variables. The R2

value in this study was 0.59.
Conclusion: According to the study results and the relationship between malnutrition and
oral health, it is necessary to conduct studies on the factors affecting malnutrition in the
elderly by intervening on the factors affecting malnutrition, changing the oral health status of
the elderly, and improving their quality of life.

Shahab Papi , Manijeh Izadi , Leila Behboodi , Zahra Taheri-Kharameh , Fatemeh Hosseini , Mahdi Yousefi , Zeynab Karimi

October 2021, Volume 31, Number 4

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