Eight-year mortality associated with dental occlusion and denture use in community-dwelling elderly persons.

Objective: To evaluate the influence of dental occlusion, with or without the use of dentures, on mortality in community-dwelling elderly persons.

Subjects: A total of 1030 randomly selected healthy independent elderly aged 65 and over were surveyed in 1995. For the study reported here, subjects were classified into three groups according to the presence or absence of maxillo-mandibular tooth contacts.