Original article
English
Mohamed S H Ingafou 1, Salah A Hammuda 1, Salma Mahfood 2, Hussain A Haidar 3.
1-Department of Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology, Diagnosis and Radiology. 2-Department of Periodontolgy, 3-Department of Community Dental health and Preventive Dentistry Dental Faculty, Garyounis University Benghazi, Libya.
Garyounis Medical Journal Vol. 22, No.2. 2005:50-63
Abstract
Background: Dentists are likely to come across many diabetic patients seeking dental treatment; some of them are simultaneously constrained h systemic complications attributed to diabetes mellitus or its associating medical conditions.
Objectives: The goal of this exploratory cross-section study was to describe the oral features of diabetes mellitus in outpatients at the times they are not coming to dental clinics because of dental complaints.
Setting: Seedi-Ehssain diabetes centre in Benghazi. the clinical data were collected in the period from July to October 2003.
Patients and methods: The patient must be Libyan resident with established diagnosis of diabetes mellitus for at least 1 year. Data anal sis as done to find out the frequency of different oral lesions and dentition problems and their prevalence according to the patient’s age, gender. disease duration, the use of antidiabetic drugs. smoking habit, the pattern of home oral health care practices. dentist visits as well as the oral symptoms attributed to diabetes mellitus in such patients.
Results: The study comprised 375 Libyan adults with a median age of 57 years, 214 of them were females. Ninety seven percent of the studied patients have type II diabetes mellitus. The prevalence of systemic complications of diabetes in this group of patients was comparable to previous studies of other populations, but there had been inferior oral health status featured in neglected home oral health care practices such as the use of tooth brushing, mouth washes and flossing by most of the patients which resulted in high DMFT (10.87; sd=6.68),advanced periodontitis and high rate of edentulism. Teeth loss is exceptionally high as 95.5 of the patients have one or more missing teeth, and about 50 of the patients are in need for prosthetic replacement. There is no increased frequency of soft tissue lesions in comparison to the reported worldwide frequencies.
Conclusions: The dentist should he aw are of the possibility of the existence of undiagnosed diabetes mellitus at the time of history taking and pay more attention to the signs of oral conditions associated with established diabetes mellitus and the complications attributed to its accompanying systemic diseases. Careful interpretation of this study’s findings indicates that this sector of Libyan population do not hay e access to oral healthcare ser’ ices except for dental extraction,while the majority of them have multiple decayed teeth and advanced periodontitis need to he treated.
Keywords: Diabetes mellitus, Oral Diseases. Libyan Patients. Clinical study.
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