Maintaining validity of neuropathic pain screening tools over time: challenges and opportunities.

Mental disorders are a major global public health challenge and continue to place a substantial burden on healthcare systems and society. With increasing emphasis on the overall health management of people with mental disorders, greater attention has been paid to their physical health, among which oral health is particularly important. Previous studies have shown that patients with schizophrenia, mood disorders, and other severe mental illnesses often have poor oral hygiene and higher rates of dental caries, periodontal disease, and tooth loss, while oral pain and impaired mastication are also common [, ]. Oral problems may not only compromise nutritional intake and quality of life, but may also aggravate psychiatric symptoms, reduce treatment adherence, and increase the complexity of inpatient management []. The risk of oral health problems may be even greater in the inpatient psychiatric setting of a general hospital. Hospitalized patients often present with cognitive impairment, behavioral disturbances, complex psychotropic medication use, and reduced self-care ability, all of which may contribute to the accumulation or progression of oral disease [, ]. However, most existing studies have focused on the prevalence of oral diseases in people with mental disorders, while relatively little attention has been given to oral consultation patterns and diagnostic profiles during psychiatric hospitalization []. Whether oral consultation needs and diagnostic patterns differ across psychiatric disorder subtypes remains insufficiently explored. Clarifying these differences may help improve the early recognition of oral problems and facilitate timely dental referral among psychiatric inpatients [, ]. Tongde Hospital of Zhejiang Province, Affiliated to Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, has an independent psychiatric inpatient campus and a large psychiatric inpatient population, providing a stable clinical data source for the systematic evaluation of oral consultation needs in this setting. Against this background, the present study used oral consultation records from psychiatric inpatients in a general hospital to characterize the consultation needs and diagnostic distributions among patients who received oral consultations during hospitalization, to compare these patterns across psychiatric disorder subtypes, and to examine factors associated with consultation demand for prosthetic treatment of missing teeth among psychiatric inpatients who received oral consultations.