Please activate JavaScript!
Please install Adobe Flash Player, click here for download
ePaper created 2016-06-09, 15:16:05 | version 1.38.0
Journal of Oral Science & Rehabilitation 60 Volume 2 | Issue 2/2016 K n o w l e d g e a b o u t p e r i o d o n t a l d i s e a s e a m o n g p a t i e n t s r e f e r r e d t o a s p e c i a l i s t c l i n i c Table 1 Table 2 Table 1 Sample description. Table 2 Awareness of the reason for referral to a specialist periodontal clinic. (yes/no),only60%answered“yes”.Themeanage of the patients who answered “yes” was 58±17 and was 55±14 for the patients who answered “no”, and these values were not statistically sig- nificantly different. Concerning the 40% of pa- tients without any knowledge about the causes of or risk factors for periodontal disease, no dif- ference was noted between patients referred from private dentalclinics orthose referredfrom public dental clinics (Fig. 1). Among the 87 pa- tientswith knowledge aboutthe causes oforrisk factors for periodontal disease, 53 (61%) ex- pressed only one possible cause, 24 (28%) two causes and 10 (11%) three (Fig. 2). Poor oral hygiene/bacteria was the most commonly men- tioned cause of periodontal disease (40.6%), followed by smoking (22.9%). Among the pa- tients who reported only one cause, poor oral hygiene/bacteria was the most cited. In patients who mentioned two causes, smoking was the most cited, followed by poor oral hygiene/bac- teria and genetics/inheritance. Stress and sys- temic diseasewere seldom reported (Fig.2).The majority of the patients (70.1%) with knowledge about periodontal disease stated that they had been informed about the causes of the disease by dental professionals, while the rest of the patients had obtained their knowledge from the Internet, magazines or other sources (Fig. 3). Discussion The objective of the present study was to inves- tigate the knowledge about periodontal disease among patients referredto a specialist periodon- talclinic.Allofthe patients regularlyvisited pub- lic or private dental clinics for dental treatment and received periodontal nonsurgical therapy at leastonceayear,amongotherdentaltreatments. Among those patients, 90.3% knew the reason for their referral to a specialist clinic. When the patients were asked whether they were familiar with the causes of periodontal disease, surpris- ingly, 40% answered “no”, even though they had been sent to a specialist clinic and received reg- ularnonsurgicalperiodontaltreatmentfromtheir dentistordentalhygienist.Regardlessofwhether theywere referred from public or private clinics, the percentage of patients with no knowledge about periodontal disease was similar. Males tended to have less knowledge than females. It has been suggested that men may have less interest intheiroralhealth and knowledge about periodontaldiseasecomparedwithwomen.15 The high frequency of patients without any know- ledge about periodontal disease among these regular recipients of dental care highlights the ineffectiveness intransferring individualtailored information fromthe professional dental staffto N = 145 % Mean age (years) S.D. (years) Referral from Private clinics 54 37.2 61.8 13.9 Public clinics 91 62.8 52.4 15.0 Sex Male 64 44.1 54.4 14.6 Female 81 55.9 57.8 15.8 Total 145 100 56.0 15.3 Male (%) Female (%) All (%) Difference according to sex Lj2 P-value Privateclinics 91.6 83.3 87.0 0.9059 0.365 Public clinics 89.7 94.2 92.3 0.7949 0.427 Total 90.5 90.2 90.3 0.0469 0.963 Private clinics 5437.261.813.9 Public clinics 9162.852.415.0 Male 6444.154.414.6 Female 8155.957.815.8 Total 14510056.015.3 Privateclinics 91.683.387.00.90590.365 Public clinics 89.794.292.30.79490.427 Total 90.590.290.30.04690.963