Difficulties in dental health care for the disabled

Upper Normandy has several disadvantages in terms of access to dental health care for disabled people: an insufficient medical population, a lack of dental schools and dental care networks. A cross-sectional epidemiological investigation, using a questionnaire form, was carried out between November 2014 and February 2015 with a cohort of dentists in this region. The topics on this form focused firstly on accessibility and compliance with standards of dental offices and the influencing factors which are hampering their accessibility implementation, and secondly on the oral care of disabled patients by practitioners of this region : the impact of incentives, influencing factors which are complicating the dental care and the usage of private and public structures. If the care of disability concerns most practitioners, an apprehension is observed in the adaptation of these doctors' treatment protocols for these specific patients. The expectations of dentists concerning disability are multiple : the creation of specific care networks, better coordination of medical and social actors, and specific training programs concerning the dental care of disabled patients.