Association between dental visit behavior and mortality: a nationwide longitudinal cohort study from NHANES

Objectives The benefits of professional dental treatment for oral diseases have been widely investigated. However, it is unclear whether professional dental treatment provides additional benefits for improving general health. Materials and methods Data were obtained from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 1999 to 2004 and 2011 to 2018 cycles. A total of 36,174 participants were included and followed-up for mortality until December 31, 2019. Dental visit behavior was defined as the time interval of last dental visit (TIDV, 5 years) and the main reasons of the last dental visit (treatment, examination, and other reasons). The Cox proportional risk model was used to estimate the hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). Results Compared with participants with time interval of less than 0.5 year, the multivariate-adjusted HRs and 95%CI for participants with time interval of more than 5 years were 1.45 (1.31, 1.61) for all-cause mortality ( P trend