Oral Health and Perimenopause. Oral Manifestations in Perimenopausal women (ePub)

Master's Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Medicine - Other, , course: MDS, language: English, abstract: There is a corelation between Menopause and the oral health of women. This study is based on the same.

The oral health status of women is becoming an increasing concern in health professions' education, research, and clinical practice. Oral health means much more than healthy teeth, and the relationship between oral and general health has been shown. The majority of pain and discomfort in the oral cavity is due to diseases of the mouth. However, there are situations where oral symptoms are a consequence of systemic diseases or systemic alterations in physiological conditions.

Oral discomfort is found in many menopausal women. The principal peri- and postmenopausal oral symptoms are a dry mouth, sensation of painful mouth of several causes, and less frequently burning mouth syndrome. Unpleasant symptoms connected to menopause are treated with hormone replacement therapy (HRT). HRT is widely used to relieve those symptoms in order to increase the well-being of the women treated. Profile studies on HRT users have indicated that these women are more health-conscious than non-users. Therefore, the hypothesis of the present study was based on the idea that women who had chosen to take HRT in the first place were those who also had better oral health and health habits in general.