ACCESSIBILITY TO DENTAL SERVICES AND FREQUENCY OF DENTAL VISITS AS A FACTOR FOR NON-REPLACEMENT OF MISSING TEETH IN PARTIALLY DENTATE PATIENTS REPORTING FOR DENTAL EXTRACTION
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33279/jkcd.v9i01.328Keywords:
Service Utilization, Visits, Partially edertolors, Dental extraction.Abstract
Objective:
To determine the frequency of dental visits and utilization of dental services among partially dentate patients reporting for dental extraction.
Materials & Methods:
A cross-sectional study was conducted on 225 patients at the out-patient department Khyber College of Dentistry, Peshawar started from January 2013 to February 2015 by using consecutive non-probability sampling. Data was collected from patients having prosthetically un-restored partially edentulous areas in mouth for a minimum of one year and reporting for dental extraction. However this study excluded those patients having history of fixed or removable prostheses. Areas regarding frequency of dental visits and utilization of dental services were addressed. All data was analyzed using SPSS 20.
Results:
Out of 225 patients, females (n=137, 60.9%) reported more than males (n=88, 39.1%). The mean age recorded was 41.5 ±11.65 (SD). Majority of the subjects (75.6%, n=170) found it easy to access the dental services and utilization and were aware of the available dental services in government clinics in n=171, 76% of the cases. Similarly, 89.7% (n=202) reported to have visited a dentist either to nearby government clinics or other dental healthcare facilities with n=91 (40.4%) of the subjects reported their visit for more than five years. Those who had reported more than five years ago had the highest number of missing teeth and un-restored edentulous spaces (n=71, 35.1%).
Conclusions:
The results of our study demonstrate that frequency of dental visits is strongly related to the number of missing teeth. Initiatives should be aimed towards improvement of dental services utilization and accessibility of dental and prosthodontic treatment. Effective use of dental services will require efforts to be taken at the patient, dentist and government level.
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Copyright (c) 2019 Faiza Abdul Hakam, Akbar Khalil, Asif Ullah Khan, Zeeshan Danish, Sahibzada Ammar Ahmad, Khadija Bibi
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