Association between beliefs about medicines and self-medication with analgesics among patients with dental pain.

Piyush Mittal,Sham Kishor Kanneppady,Syed Shahzad Hasan,Rohit Kumar Verma,Oi Yun Chan,Marco Innamorati

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0201776

Piyush Mittal, Sham Kishor Kanneppady + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201776

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Abstract

Self-medication with analgesics in dental pain management is a common practice as most of these medicines are available over-the-counter (OTC). The study aims to examine the relationship between beliefs about medicines and self-medication with analgesics in dental pain management in Malaysia. This cross-sectional study was conducted among conveniently sampled patients attending dental clinics, located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to assess association between self-medication with analgesics and patient’s beliefs about medicines via Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire. Participants were evaluated for their self-medication practices via 4 items. Further assessment was done via Quantitative Analgesic Questionnaire (QAQ) regarding the analgesics taken. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS version 24, with 0.05 as level of significance. The prevalence of self-medication with analgesics was 29.4%, with 95.6% of the participants took analgesics when necessary. Participants practising self-medication for dental pain reported more positive beliefs in General-Necessity (13.04 vs. 9.98, p = 0.001) than those not practising self-medication. However, these participants had weaker beliefs in General-Harm (12.00 vs. 10.29, p = 0.006) and General-Overuse (11.38 vs. 10.31, p = 0.032) than those not practising self-medication. Participants beliefs in General-Harm (r = -0.243; p = 0.003) and General-Overuse (r = -0.203; p = 0.012) were negatively correlated with total QAQ point. The study found that individuals who practised self-medication had stronger beliefs about the benefits of medicines and weaker beliefs in viewing medicines as harmful and overused. Findings can guide public education to improve the safety aspects of self-medication with analgesics in dental practice.

Highlights

Dental pain is a commonly reported oral health problem which can cause detrimental impact on normal physical health and psychological well-being [1,2,3]
The lower prevalence reported in this study and the study conducted by Simon et al, may be explained by the fact that not all oral health problems were eventually brought to the dentist’s attention as patients might experience pain relief after self-medicating with analgesics obtained from pharmacies [10,11,12]
The present study found a significant positive correlation between beliefs in Specific-Necessity and total Quantitative Analgesic Questionnaire (QAQ) point

Summary

Introduction

Dental pain is a commonly reported oral health problem which can cause detrimental impact on normal physical health and psychological well-being [1,2,3]. Pain alleviation is of the utmost importance and analgesics including opioid and non-opioid analgesics are commonly prescribed to alleviate this pain [4,5,6,7]. Patients experiencing dental pain tend to self-medicate with these analgesics in hopes of avoiding dental treatment [1,8]. Self-medication among patients with dental pain is a common practice driven by various underlying factors. It was found that beliefs about medicines contributed to the practice of self-medication [1,8,10,11,12,13]

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