Abstract
Background: Despite the high prevalence of oral problems among pregnant women and their association with pregnancy outcome, dental service utilization in this period is still low.
Aim: This study aimed to explore reasons for low dental attendance in pregnancy from a pregnant women’s point of view. Methods: In this qualitative study, ten in-depth individual semi-structured interviews and two organized focus groups were conducted by a dentist and a midwife as facilitators to explore the points of view of the pregnant women about dental care during pregnancy. Participants (n=22) were selected conveniently and purposefully from those attending public health centres, in two socioeconomically different districts of Tehran, Iran, for their routine prenatal checkups, in February 2015. A topic guide was used on demographic and pregnancy related questions, their history of receiving dental care and its barriers. After saturation of data ,the interviews were audio-taped and transcribed with the permission of the participants and then coded for content analysis using MAXQDA10 software.
Results: The age of the pregnant women ranged from 18 to 45 years (mean age: 30.4±7.5 years) with a mean gestational stage of 25.3±6.4 weeks. Seven of the women (32%) had academic education. Of 350 extracted codes, the major findings as reasons of low dental attendance in pregnancy were categorised within seven main themes, Cost of dental care, deficient oral health knowledge and cultural barriers, physiological changes, psychological conditions, Lack of time, Unavailability of a qualified dentist.
Conclusions: Financial deprivation and a lack of knowledge were reported as the most common reasons for low dental attendance during pregnancy. Therefore, there is a need to prioritize and tackle the barriers identified in this study to increase dental attendance in this period.
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