Profile of Prosthetic Care Consumers at the Institute of Odontology and Stomatology Clinic of Dakar

Abstract

The high frequency of dental extractions creates a high demand for prosthetic rehabilitation. Therefore, this study aimed to describe the profile of consumers of prosthetic care at the Institute of Odontology and Stomatology in Dakar. It was a descriptive and retrospective study of patients who had been consulted at the prosthetic clinic of the Institute of Odontology and Stomatology of Dakar. Data were collected from medical records from 09 November 2019 to 09 June 2020. The tools used to collect and process the information were the Sphinx software and the Excel spreadsheet. Out of the 101 patient records, 51% were male and 48% belonged to the age group of 18 to 39 years. Nearly 38.61% of the patients lived less than 5 km from the health care facility and 70.3% of the respondents had a monthly income of fewer than 100,000 FCFA. Clinically, 96% of patients came for functional reasons, 78.2% for aesthetic reasons, and partial edentulism was the most frequent diagnosis (96%). Chi-square tests were performed to find a dependency or non-dependency relationship between diagnosis and age, but also between income and treatment cost. In sum, age and diagnosis were independent of each other, just as patient income was not related to treatment cost. Proximity to health facilities, income, and cost of treatment are factors that influence accessibility to oral health care. It is important to integrate the profile of the consumer of care into global management.