Evaluation of health seeking behaviour of patients with severe periodontitis visiting private dental college and hospital

Dr Akbar Naqvi, Dr Aruna Das H*, Dr. Aiyana Parthi, Dr Mohit Kamra, Dr Renuka G Nagrale, Dr Prabhakar Kumar, Dr Kumar Gaurav Chhabra

Department of Oral Medicine and Radiology, Azamgarh Dental College, Azamgarh, Bihar, India

ABSTRACT

Severe periodontal disease, which may result in tooth loss, was estimated to be the 11th most prevalent disease globally. Despite such high prevalence awareness regarding it is still very little. Understanding of health seeking behaviour is essential to provide need based health care services to the population and managing periodontal diseases. Hence the present research was carried out to identify the determinants of health seeking behaviour in patients visiting private dental college and hospital with severe periodontitis. A cross sectional study was conducted among the patients visiting private dental colleges and hospitals with severe periodontitis between the age group of 18 and above. Data was recorded by a self- administered, structured, pre-tested questionnaire based on items to determine health seeking behaviour of participants in this study. Study included 512 participants, 279 (54.5%) males and 233 (45.5%) females. It was observed that mobile tooth was the most common dental problem reported by 288 (56.3%) participants. Fear was the major reason for not visiting the dentist and constituted about 57 (33.7%) of the total influencing factors. It can be concluded that healthcare seeking behaviour among sever periodontitis patients was poor. So efforts must be made to bring a change in this scenario.

Keywords:

Severe periodontitis, Response rate, Quality healthcare, Socioeconomic Status, Chronic disease prevention programmes