Study of Dental Treatment Received by Attenders in Government General Dental Center/Hospital Dugbe, Ibadan-Nigeria: A 5-Year Longitudinal Retrospective Study

Abstract

A study to determine the different types of received patients attending the Government Dental Center/Hospital, Dugbe Ibadan, Nigeria between December 1999 and December 2004 and to see how this treatment is distributed among different sexes and age groups. Government Dental Center Dugbe, Ibadan, was the Pioneer Dental Center in the South-Western Region of Nigeria and was established in the precolonial era. The treatment pattern noticed was an alarming rate of extractions which accounts for 76.65% of all patients treated, dentures (6.96%), scalings (15.80%), filings (0.32%), medication (0.24%), checkup (0.03%) accounted for the rest. When this result is calibrated on actual treatment given (excluding medication and checkup), patients requiring extraction jumped to 76.23%. Female to male ratio was more than 2.1 while adult to underage ratio was 3.1. Thus, there is a need to urgently address this trend before the whole population is made edentulous and to embrace a preventive policy programmed in dentistry. Clinical significance There is an alarming rate of dental extraction which constitutes the commonest procedure carried out in this study in Nigeria. How to cite this article Olaleye AO. Study of Dental Treatment Received by Attenders in Government General Dental Center/ Hospital Dugbe, Ibadan-Nigeria: A 5-Year Longitudinal Retrospective Study. World J Dent 2013;4(2):86-91.

Attitude and Behavior to Oral Health of 456 Patients Who Presented for Tooth Extraction at 2 Health Facilities in Southwestern Nigeria

“…Contrary to previous studies that reported less extractions in regular attenders (8,17), we did not find any significant difference in the number of extractions needed between the different categories of attenders. This could however be due to the fact that only relatively few regular attenders were involved in this study.…”

“…Published works have shown that the routine use of dental services is poor globally, although worse in developing nations, and that most patients present at the dental clinic majorly for treatment of symptoms (1,2,10,15). Majority of our respondents were making their first contact with a dental clinic at the time of the extraction, which corroborates the findings from previous studies that majority of dental service users are problem oriented (1,8,10). Adegbembo (2) in a study in Ibadan, southwestern Nigeria, reported that only 9% of household had utilized dental services the previous year.…”

“…Most of the regular attenders are likely to have other forms of treatments apart from extraction. This is corroborated by earlier studies that reported more restorative and periodontal treatment in regular attenders than infrequent attenders among which a high rate of tooth loss was common (8,16,17).…”

“…Patients utilizing dental services can be grouped into nonattenders, problem-oriented attenders, and regular attenders (6). Regular dental visit has been shown to be one of the effective ways of maintaining good oral health (7 -9). Attitude to routine use of dental services is poor globally, but worse in developing countries (1,10).…”