Dental services utilization

Dental services utilization has been influenced by many determinants, including sociodemographic aspects, subjective need, as well as beliefs and the importance given to oral health. The purpose of this study was to reveal the profile of the dental service attenders, exploring the effect of social demographic conditions and the impact of oral health conditions in quality of life, on dental service utilization at Cuiabá and Juiz de Fora cities. This study analysed secondary data from epidemiological surveys from these cities which were made under the same methodology. Data was collected using four standardized  interview questionnaires about social-demographic information oral health status, dental services utilization, and for last, the subjective indicator OHIP14. A random sample of individuals listed in the Domiciliary Visiting Programme from the Public Health Service in the two cities was selected and stratified by age and sex. There was complete information about 923 respondents. The association between dichotomic variables and dental services utilization was explored through chi-square statistics. Odds Ratio was calculated for the significant variables. OHIP scores and age as a continuos variable were analysed using t-Student test. Logistic regression analysis was carried out to investigate the combined effect of the variables on dental attendance to identify the most important predictor of service utilization. The results showed that age, dental status, education, social class background and not needing a full denture significantly influenced dental services utilization. The appliance of the subjective indicator could reveal that subjects with higher OHIP scores were more likely to perceive more need for dental treatment and had more dental attendance. Based on these findings, we concluded that, in these cities, younger dentate people, from social classes I, II and III, with more years of education, and more impact of dental conditions, used more dental services.