Utilization of Dental Services by the Female Population in Rural Areas; A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
 This study aimed to gain an insight into all those factors that facilitate and prevent patients from seeking dental treatments on time. 
 METHODOLOGY
 A structured closed-ended questionnaire was filled with detailed information obtained from 215 female patients who visited the dental out-patient department with different dental ailments and was analyzed using SPSS Version 22. Also, the post-stratification chi-square test was applied to check the significance of all the comparative statistics. P-value <0.05 or = to 0.05 was considered significant.
 RESULTS
 A total of 215 females of age ranged from 20 to 60 years, with the largest group of respondents aged between 20 to 25 years (42%), 40 and above (38%). The most common reasons for not seeking dental treatments were, fear of pain (51%), the disease was not severe (46.9%), Fear of infectious disease (37.8%), high dental costs (28.6%), non-availability of female dentists (26.5%), economic issues (21.4%), lengthy appointments (20.4%), cost of transportation (15.3%). 
 CONCLUSION
 Our results concluded that only a small portion of females visited a dentist when the symptoms first appeared. There was a misconception that dental disease could be cured with over-the-counter medications also enough services, professional staff and a hygienic environment are not provided at the hospital and private treatments are charged more, which prevents them from visiting Dental health facilities. Hence dental awareness programs are required to be implemented and Government is required to fulfil these unmet basic facilities.