Oral Soft Tissue Changes In Geriatric Patients

As an individual ages, changes occur both in physical processes and metabolic processes of the organism. It is the inability of individual cells to replicate themselves beyond a certain point and also having diminished metabolic activity. When specific to age, most structural and functional changes are so closely related to impaired cell regeneration and metabolic cellular activity which affects the homeostatic condition. Changes in oral mucosa are apparent after the age of 70, due to many metabolic disorders, it occurs soon or earlier in their life. The tissue appears satiny and shiny with stretched appearance, which is accompanied by loss of resilience and elasticity with friable surface and oedema. The aim of this review is to find out the influence of the oral soft tissue changes in geriatric patients. This research was conceived as scoping literature review. This review has accessed existing reviews and researches in the last decade mostly, through PMC database, MeSH, Google Scholar, Pubmed, Medline, CrossRef and the search terms included were ‘oral soft tissue change', ‘oral mucosal lesions', ‘salivary gland', ‘tongue'. Considered research was limited to manuscripts related to english, to geriatric patients, oral soft tissue changes, oral mucous membrane. This review excluded non english researches, other oral problems, oral soft tissue changes not in geriatric patients and oral hard tissue structures. Quality of articles used was assessed using Quality assessment tools. The description of included studies for the review is tabulated. The influence and effect of oral soft tissue changes in the geriatric patients is well understood and the treatment and care can be given to them by this knowledge of review. These general guidelines can be used to exclude most oral soft tissue changes (oral lesions in particular) from clinical differential diagnosis, and guide the next step in management of a patient's problem. Final diagnosis requires additional testing like biopsy spectrum, etc.