Influence of scheduling in clinical dental care on indicators of oral health

Abstract

Objective Assess the oral health indicators in the Family Health Units (Unidades de Saúde da Família -USFs) with scheduled demand in comparison withFamily Health Units with spontaneous demand in oral health care, in Piracicaba. Methods Family Health Units located in Piracicaba, were randomly chosen: 5 Units with spontaneous demand and 5 Units with scheduled demand. Secondary data in daily production spreadsheets were collected from the information system, from February to September 2013. These were organized into indicators: 1) access; 2) resolutivity; 3) ratio of dental emergency per inhabitant; 4) mean number of individual preventive and curative dental procedures; 5) ratio of dental extraction per dental procedure; 6) ratio of dental extraction per inhabitant; 7) mean number of supervised toothbrushing sessions. Data were compared and statistically analyzed with the BioStat 5.0 program, by applying the Student's-t test (p ≤ 0.05). ResultsThere were significant differences in the indicators of dental emergency, dental extraction per clinical procedure, and dental extractions per inhabitant, and these values were higher in Family Health Units with spontaneous demand.