Senior Stories

This week we were at the fair of the Costa Rican Gerontological Association AGECO, between jokes, laughter, and tears the older adults told us their stories of how they lost their teeth.

Doña Letty, 89 years old, melancholic, told us that before going to the dentist was to have her "teeth pulled out", that even before marrying the love of her life she did not have any teeth at the age of 18. And they were very similar stories in which only the names and ages changed.

What apparently many years ago was "normal" is no longer so. Today we know that when a tooth presents some type of affection, what we dentists avoid until the end is dental extraction, because no material will be able to replicate one hundred percent of what we have by nature.

On an emotional level, Doña Letty told us that the two things that affect her daily life the most are not being able to eat because her prostheses dance and sneezing because she constantly feels that her prostheses are going to fly away.

What to do when Doña Letty's case is the same as that of our parents or grandparents? Well, all is not lost; technology has advanced and so has dentistry, there is no age limit to give back to an older adult the possibility of smiling, eating and speaking safely.

Currently we have fixed options for rehabilitation, which include crowns, bridges and dental implants. It should be taken into consideration that these are possible if the patient has the necessary quality and quantity of bone, and that a detailed medical history should be taken to know what medications the patient is taking or what systemic conditions he/she is suffering from.

Aging is an inevitable process of life, but suffering dental problems at this age does not have to be. It is convenient to take some precautions with these patients in order to improve oral hygiene and minimize the loss of teeth, and if they have already been lost, to replace them so that they can have an optimal quality of life as they deserve, giving them back the illusion of smiling at life.