In Switzerland, edentulism among seniors fell from 44% to 4% in 40 years

As populations age, understanding long-term trends in oral health among older adults becomes essential for planning care. This systematic review and meta-analysis synthesized more than five decades of Swiss data on oral health status, chewing function, and quality of life in adults aged 65 and older.

The authors searched Embase, MEDLINE via PubMed, Swiss data repositories, and performed manual searches, assessing risk of bias with Joanna Briggs Institute tools. Random-effects meta-analyses estimated the prevalence of edentulism, periodontal disease, and dental prostheses, as well as mean DMFT (decayed, missing, filled teeth) scores, stratified by living situation (community-dwelling versus long-term care or hospital) and by decade.

The headline finding is a striking improvement over time: edentulism fell from 44% in 1980-1990 to just 4% in 2020-2025, and the mean number of missing teeth dropped from 13.5 to 5.5 over the same period. Across every decade studied, community-dwelling older adults had consistently better oral health and chewing function than those in long-term care facilities or hospitals — though oral hygiene remained only moderate to poor across all settings, including at home. Data on oral health-related quality of life was scarce, with only three studies reporting patient-centered outcomes.

Clinical relevance: this is genuinely good news — edentulism in Swiss seniors has fallen more than tenfold in four decades, meaning far more elderly patients now retain natural dentition into old age. But that success creates a new clinical burden: more retained teeth and more prostheses to maintain in a population where oral hygiene is still inconsistent, particularly in institutional care. The persistent gap between community-dwelling and institutionalized older adults points to long-term care settings as the priority for targeted oral health interventions, and the scarcity of quality-of-life data is a clear gap for future research to address.