EDITORIAL Who Is Responsible for a Nursing Home Resident’s Daily Oral

In their article, ‘‘Hand function and oral hygiene in Bra-zilian institutionalized elderly,’ ’ Padilha et al.1 call atten-tion to a critically important yet undervalued issue of nursing home care: the risk that care providers are ignoring self-care and instrumental activities that are not identified as activities of daily living or picked up through perfor-mance measures. Although this was not the central thrust of their investigation, it is a key message that should be ex-trapolated from the authors ’ findings and ought to serve as the basis for overdue action. The study’s findings may be simplistically summarized as follows: The objectively assessed eye-hand coordination of elderly institutionalized patients is correlated with ability to clean teeth and dentures effectively. This observation, independent of its geriatric implications, is practically ax-iomatic for dental health professionals caring for younge