Dental pain and absenteeism in a workers sample

 Dental pain and absenteeism in a workers sample
Introduction: Studies of absenteeism are important to construct parameters in health worker's diagnosis, associated with quality of life even for workers as for those who need their services. Objective: verify the prevalence of the dental pain and the absenteeism, related to sociodemographic characteristics. Material and methods: The research had a cross sectional design. A random sample of 192 municipal employees from Venda Nova do Imigrante City, Brazil was selected from a universe of 545 individuals. This sample was calculated based on some parameters: expected prevalence of 26%, standard error of 5% and confidence interval of 95%. Workers in vacations or on sick leave were excluded. Data was collected using a 27 itens questionnaire applied by a municipal worker. The comparison of dental pain and absenteeism prevalence with sociodemographic and functional factors was verified using Fisher Exact test. The research project was approved by a Ethics Research Committee. Results: The prevalence of dental pain among the employees was 43% and half of these worked feeling dental pain. Absenteeism related to dental pain was 23,4%. Workers with less instruction level had more dental pain. Male subjects, less years of education and less family income were related with higher absenteeism caused by dental pain. Conclusion: High dental pain frequency found in this study indicates health promotion policies’ need and the inclusion of dentists at the industries as a strategy to improve workers’ quality of life

 Keywords: Dental pain. Absenteeism. Worker’s health. Public health.