O impacto da ausência dentária sobre o cotidiano de adultos residentes no Bairro das Indústrias

Abstract

Dentistry, traditionally, focuses on the use of clinical resources to diagnose oral health conditions. These, however, are limited for they do not display the impact that oral health can produce on individuals quality of life. By making use of a subjective indicator, OHIP-14, this work aimed at the assessment of the absence of teeth over a population sample of adults with 20 to 59 years of age, in their daily living conditions, who resided in the Bairro das Indústrias neighborhood, Barreiro Region of Belo Horizonte city, in Minas Gerais state of Brazil. The Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-14) formulary has been applied, using its transcultural translation. The results have revealed that 79.53% of the interviewed individuals showed some or maximum impact on their oral conditions over daily living conditions, on the dimensions representing pain and psicological handicap classes. As for the social handicap class, 83.33% revealed that there has been some or none impact over their oral health. The experience of pain and tooth loss, reported as impact over oral health, emphasize the negative consequences of the current practice of dentistry and points out to the necessity of services restructuration, bringing upon the application of qualitative studies to epidemiologic data collections.