Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on dental services in primary care in Maranhão, Brazil

Abstract

This article aims to analyze indicators of the utilization of oral health services (UOHS) in primary health care in the state of Maranhão, Brazil, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted an ecological time series study. The unit of analysis was the state of Maranhão, and the exposure variable was the COVID-19 pandemic, dichotomized into pre-pandemic and pandemic. The outcome variables were the monthly rates per 1,000 population of three UOHS indicators: rate of preventive procedures (RPP-PHC); rate of urgent procedures (RUP-PHC), and rate of curative procedures (RCP-PHC). The data were collected from the Primary Health Care Information System (SISAB) and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) for the period from 2015-2022. The analyses were performed using the Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) model. The three indicators showed an upward trend up to January 2019. The pandemic caused a significant reduction in the RPP (Xreg = -6.55; p-value = 0.0008) and RCP (Xreg = -4.74; p-value = 0.0005), starting in the first semester of 2020 and continuing into the second semester of 2022, but did not influence the RUP (Xreg = -0.03; p-value = 0.12). The COVID-19 pandemic caused a reduction in preventive and curative oral health services in Maranhão.