Impact of a dental care intervention on the hospital mortality of critically ill patients admitted to intensive care units: A quasi-experimental study

Background: We aimed to evaluate the impact of providing dental care to critically ill patients on their risk of death and ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP).

Methods: A quasi-experimental study was conducted in 2 intensive care units (ICU) from 2016 to 2019. The intervention consisted of implementing routine dental care, focusing on oral hygiene and periodontal treatment, at least 3 times a week, for patients admitted to the study units. In the pre-intervention period, routine oral hygiene was provided by the ICU nursing staff. The primary and secondary study outcomes were mortality, evaluated at the end of the ICU stay, and VAP incidence density, respectively. Data were analyzed using the ARIMA (autoregressive integrated moving average) time series model in R software.

Results: During the intervention period, 5,147 dental procedures were performed among 355 patients. The time series showed that ICU mortality was 36.11%, 32.71%, and 32.30% within the 3 years before the intervention, and 28.71% during the intervention period (P = .015). VAP incidence density did not significantly change during the study period (P = .716).

Conclusion: A dental care intervention focused on oral hygiene and periodontal treatment regularly provided by dentists to critically ill patients may decrease their risk of dying in the ICU. Randomized clinical trials should be performed to confirm these findings.

Trial registration: WHO-affiliated Brazilian Clinical Trials Registry. RBR-4jmz36. Registered 7 October 2018, before first patient enrollment.