Intervención educativa sobre salud bucal para la tercera edad en Centros Comunitarios de Salud Mental

background: as the middle duration of life improves and population's pyramid goes getting wider, the cases of exceptional longevity are more and more numerous. objective: to evaluate the impact of the affective-participatory techniques for the oral health promotion in the elderly of the community centers of mental health in camagüey municipality. method: an experimental study of the type before and later without control group by means of a community intervention in camagüey municipality was performed, from june 2007 to june 2008. the universe was constituted by two-hundred sixty nine old men and the sample was integrated by seventy old men. to them a structured interview to determine the level of hygienic-sanitary-oral information, risk factors, oral and prosthetic hygiene was applied. results: the risk factors that prevailed were the tabagism with 25, 3%, the continuous use of dental prosthesis with 52%, for the patients with prosthesis and deficient oral hygiene with 60% in toothed patients. conclusions: the hygienic-sanitary-oral information behaved as satisfactory in more than the fourth three parts of the old men. the efficiency of the prosthesis′ hygiene improved in almost the entirety of the old men. there was a favorable perception of the same ones with regard to the intervention, because the majority recognizes that incorporated an action by the action when observing beneficial changes for their health that generated positive experiences in the studied group.