Influence of Type of Dental Visit on the Incidence of COVID-19 and Related Hospitalisation Among Older People in Japan

Mizuki Saito, Yoshihiro Shimazaki (), Toshiya Nonoyama and Yoshinori Inamoto
Additional contact information
Mizuki Saito: Department of Preventive Dentistry and Dental Public Health, School of Dentistry, Aichi Gakuin University, Nagoya 464-8650, Japan
Yoshihiro Shimazaki: Department of Preventive Dentistry and Dental Public Health, School of Dentistry, Aichi Gakuin University, Nagoya 464-8650, Japan
Toshiya Nonoyama: Department of Preventive Dentistry and Dental Public Health, School of Dentistry, Aichi Gakuin University, Nagoya 464-8650, Japan
Yoshinori Inamoto: Mie Dental Association, Tsu 514-0003, Japan

IJERPH, 2024, vol. 21, issue 12, 1-11

Abstract: In 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic began worldwide. We examined the association between dental visit status and the incidence of COVID-19 and hospitalisation for it among older people based on medical claims data to help reduce COVID-19 severity. The study included 170,232 people who were 75–85 years old in fiscal 2019, with fiscal 2020 and 2021 serving as the follow-up period to ascertain the status of COVID-19. Using medical claims data, we investigated four types of dental visit (no visit, only periodontal treatment, periodontal and other treatment, and only other treatment) during fiscal 2019 and the incidence of COVID-19 and hospitalisation for COVID-19 during the follow-up period. Logistic regression analyses were performed with the incidence of COVID-19 and hospitalisation for COVID-19 as the dependent variables. Of the participants, 3206 (1.9%) developed COVID-19, of whom, 559 (17.4%) were hospitalised. There was not a significant association between the incidence of COVID-19 and type of dental visit. Participants with dental visits for periodontal treatment during the baseline year had a significantly lower odds ratio (OR) for hospitalisation due to COVID-19 compared to those without dental visits (OR: 0.71, 95% confidence interval: 0.58–0.78). The results suggest that dental visits for periodontal treatment including maintenance are important not only for maintaining oral health but also for preventing severe COVID-19.

Keywords: COVID-19; dental visit; hospitalisation; older people; periodontal treatment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/21/12/1668/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/21/12/1668/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:21:y:2024:i:12:p:1668-:d:1543684

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().