Abstract
The study had multiple aims; 1) To assess infrastructure availability at primary health care centers for the management of patients with dental and maxillofacial complaints. 2) To assess reasons for the first point of contact for patients at primary health care centers with dental and maxillofacial complaints. 3) To assess the perception of medical officers at primary health care centers on oral and maxillofacial related treatment seeking behavior of patients visiting the center. Method: The structured questionnaire was subject to content validation (C.H.Lawshe-1975) and then the questionnaire was adopted, the details of primary health centers in Bangalore Urban District as well as Bangalore Rural District were collected from the District Health Officer and all the centers were visited by the investigators, The Informed Consent and response for self administered questionnaire was obtained from the medical officers. The Ethical clearance for the study was obtained from Institutional Review Board of The Oxford Dental College, Bangalore before commencing the study.
Results: Data was collected from all the seventy six (65 responded) primary health centers in Bangalore urban district and forty eight centers (30 responded) in the Bangalore rural district, about 65(61.7%) of the centers (urban and rural together) do not have a separate dental unit, 85(89.2%) of the medical/ dental officers responded that patients repeatedly seek symptomatic relief for dental and maxillofacial complaints, 73.8% of the centers do not maintain separate dental outpatient registers.
Conclusion: There is a need for integrating delivery of oral health care through primary health centers as 78.4% of primary health centers lacked sufficient infrastructure (separate dental unit, dental staff, outpatient registers) to cater the oral health needs of these patients, which are currently providing only symptomatic relief.
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