Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Oral disorders are quite frequent in patients with diabetes mellitus type 2 in particular elderly patients. Their presence at this type of persons may influence the glycemic balance and entail a reduction of the masticatory potential with a risk of malnutrition. The purpose of the work is to establish the relationship between the oral disorders and the nutritional status of the elderly subjects with diabetes mellitus type 2.

Patients and Methods: This is a descriptive study conducted in 300 diabetics type 2, over 65 years of age, followed in the service of Endocrinology, Diabetology and nutrition of the CHU in Casablanca during the period between April 2016 and October 2017. We assessed the nutritional status by MNA (mini nutritional assessment)

Results: The average age of our patients was 71±6.5 years with extremes of 65 to 92 years. Women represent 59% of our sample. Diabetes was unbalanced in 44.3% of patients with an illness duration exceeding 5 years in 70% of patients. The oral dental disorders -were present in 58.3% of patients with swallowing disorders in 7.67% of cases. A bad oral health state with the presence of dental caries was found in 28.3% of patients, 17.6% had a dental prosthesis poorly adapted, 7.6% complained of a dry mouth, 2.6% of patients were toothless and 3 patients reported dysgeusia. The evaluation of the nutritional status of these patients has shown that 54.2% had a risk of malnutrition and 19.4% were malnourished. The comparison of this group with the other patients of the sample having a good oral state showed a statistically significant association between the presence of oral disorders and risk of malnutrition (P=0.00002) as well as the presence of malnutrition (P=0.00001).

Conclusion: Our study reveals that the frequency of oral disorders in elderly diabetic patients. These disorders can foster malnutrition and may influence the vital prognosis, hence the importance of the systematic evaluation of oral state of our elderly diabetic patients.