Objective: This study aimed to investigate the occurrence of missed dental appointments among 16–19-year-old adolescents in a Swedish county. A second aim was to explore associations between background and concomitant factors and missed appointments and to investigate if these associations differed between areas with different sociodemographic profiles.

Materials and methods: A list of booked, and missed, appointments for 10,158 individuals during 2012 was used for assessments. Based on the total sample, 522 cases with, and 522 matched controls without, dental avoidance behavior in 2012 were identified. Data on previous missed and cancelled appointments, oral health status, dental treatment, fear or behavior problems, and medical, and, where available, psychosocial or lifestyle factors were extracted from the dental records using a preset protocol covering the period 2009–2012.

Results: In 2012, 13.1% of 23,522 booked appointments were missed, with a higher proportion of missed appointments among boys than girls. Cases with avoidance behavior more often had a record of sociodemographic load and dental fear or behavior management problems. They also had more oral health problems, more invasive dental treatments, and, in the past, more missed and canceled appointments.

Conclusion: To enable good oral health and continued regular dental care, we need to pay more attention to adolescents’ individual situation and be observant of early signs of avoidance.

Objective: To review articles exploring manifestations of avoidance of or non-attendance to dental care, to identify background and concomitant factors specifically associated with dental avoidance among adolescents.

Methods: PubMed, CINAHL and PsychINFO were searched using MeSH terms and keywords covering dental avoidance, non-attendance and non-utilization. Searches were limited to peer-reviewed studies in English, published in 1994– 2014. Twenty-one research articles were included. Data were extracted, ordered, coded, categorized, and summarized according to the integrative review method.

Results: The identified factors formed three common major themes: Environmental, Individual and Situational factors. Only seven studies, all from Sweden or Norway, investigated factors associated with dental avoidance. The remaining 14 studies were geographically widespread. Regarding avoidance, the main focus was found to be on individual and situational factors, while environmental factors were more often investigated for the outcome non-attendance.

Conclusions: Although a wide variety of environmental, individual and situational factors could be summarized in this review, factors specifically associated with dental avoidance in a context of free dental care still need to be investigated. The possible impacts of cultural background, of tobacco, alcohol or drug use and of psycho-social circumstances deserve further research. Clinical implications of today’s knowledge may be to pay attention to the adolescents’ individual background and everyday life situation, to offer agreed and individualized treatment, taking fears and attitudes into consideration, to avoid painful treatments, and to be alert for early signs of avoidance.

In Sweden, national guidelines have been introduced to ensure that older persons in need of health care and social services enjoy a meaningful daily life. When new guidelines are introduced in elderly care, the experience of the older persons or their relatives are seldom taken into account as the guidelines often are formulated from using a top-down approach. Therefore the aim was to describe relatives experience about obstacles and opportunities for a meaningful daily life for their older family member. The analysis was based on a qualitative content analysis. Five themes describe how a meaningful daily life can be created and one overall theme emerged that describe a meaningful daily life as “In partnership to maintain the family member’s routines and habits in an everyday rhythm filled with meaning, in a home like environment and in community with others”.