Dental caries in the stomatological emergency service in the area of the Polyclinic René Vallejo. Bayamo

Abstract

Introduction: dental caries remains as a relevant health problem because of its frequency, damage caused, possibilities of effective performance, its cost per capita and the community interest.
Objective: to determine the frequency of dental caries at the emergency services at René Vallejo Ortiz polyclinic in Bayamo, from November 2011 to May 2012.
Methods: a descriptive prospective study was carried out. The universe was constituted by 1402 patients; only 922 cases were selected for our study, whose cause of emergency was the dental caries. We evaluated some variables like age, sex, risk factors, besides we also had the presence or not of pulpal and periapical diseases and the followed up therapeutic behaviors.
Results: with the results it was confirmed that 65, 8% of the cases had dental caries, the most affected group of age was between 35-59 years (71, 2%), most of the patients were females (56, 1%). As risk factors prevailed social causes, the inefficient buccal hygiene and the ingestion of cariogenic food. The diseases with more incidences were the pulp pathologies (32.8%). The medical cure was the mostly used therapy (64%).
Conclusions: dental caries originated most of the stomatological emergencies in this health area, prevailed the group of age from 35 to 59 years old and females. Risk factors that prevailed were social, inefficient buccal hygiene and cariogenic diet.   There were most diagnosed pulpal diseases rather than periapical ones, and the therapy conduct followed was conservation of pulpal vitality.