Dental Visits Found to Reduce Diabetes Hospitalization

January 11, 2012 —Patients with diabetes were one third less likely to visit an emergency department or be hospitalized for the disease when they got regular dental care, researchers report in the January 2012 issue of the Journal of the American Dental Association.

"What was encouraging was the magnitude of the association," lead author David Mosen, PhD, MPH, an affiliate investigator at Kaiser Permanente Northwest in Portland, Oregon, told Medscape Medical News.

He cautioned that the retrospective study could not prove that dental care directly reduced the patients' risk for a diabetic emergency. "We don't know if it's because of the dental care, or if it's just because people with good dental care also have good general healthcare," he said.

However, Dr. Mosen said the researchers did use statistical methods to adjust for such factors as visits to primary care physicians, and still found a strong association with dental visits.

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Source: MedScape