Oral Rehabilitation with Dietary Intervention for Older Patients in NI
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The impact of a tailored dietary intervention coupled with oral rehabilitation on the nutritional status of older patients.
IRAS ID
203060
Contact name
Gerald McKenna
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Queen's University Belfast
ISRCTN Number
ISRCTN66118345
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 11 months, 31 days
Research summary
Many factors influence food choices including income levels, education and living circumstances. Dental health including the numbers of remaining natural teeth can also be important. As patients get older and lose their teeth they tend to move towards a softer diet composed of easier to chew foods. Unfortunately this often means that important foods such as fruit and vegetables are avoided. Simply giving patients new teeth or dentures is not enough to break these habits and change their diet.
This study aims to test if providing tailored dietary advice focused on creating healthy eating habits, in combination with replacing missing teeth, can improve the diets of older patients. The habit-based dietary intervention will be developed in line with the MRC Guidelines for Developing Complex Interventions. It will include desk-based research involving dietary analysis of the target group, using publically available national surveys, and focus groups investigating the barriers and facilitators to healthy eating and the factors that influence food choice. Based on the information obtained from the qualitative and the desk-based research, the format of the tailored habit-based dietary intervention will be decided and then tested (non-randomised) on a small group of patients (n=10). This will allow final adjustments to the intervention before conducting a randomised controlled trial.
All patients participating in the RCT will have received dental treatment to replace their missing natural teeth. Half of the patients will receive the healthy habits diet advice to help them improve their diet whilst the remainder will receive a healthy eating information leaflet. At the start of the study and at 2 months, 4 months and 8 months, patients will be asked to complete surveys about their nutritional knowledge, food satisfaction, dietary intake and their oral health, as well as provide blood and saliva samples to measure nutrient levels. The two groups will be compared to test if the healthy habits dietary advice and counselling has resulted in any improvements.
REC name
HSC REC A
REC reference
16/NI/0224
Date of REC Opinion
8 Nov 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion