Dental Attendance Among the Elderly in Benin-city, Edo state

Abstract

Background: Despite the increase in the elderly population globally, it appears that several studies focused on dental clinic attendance by other age groups and with sparse data on the elderly.
 Aim: This study therefore, aimed to determine the rate of dental clinic attendance among the elderly in Benin-city.
 Materials and methods: This was a half year multi-center, prospective cross-sectional study. This study conducted among dental patients at the outpatient departments two tertiary health facilities in Benin-city. A three-sectioned questionnaire was used to collect data. The data collected were sex, age, and level of educational, marital status, occupational level, religion, and ethnicity. Other collected data were co-morbidities, previous visit to dental clinic, time of last visit, reason for last visit, intention to visit the clinic again, presenting complaints and barriers to dental attendant. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were analyzed.
 Results: a total number of patients seen were 1450. The prevalence of the elderly patients was 27.7 %. Mean age was 70.4 ± 5.7 years with age range of 65- 97 years. The female elderly were more (52.9%) than their male counterparts. More than half (53.6%) had hypertensions. Less than half (30.2%) rate their dental health as good. More than half (56.9%) have never visited the dental clinic. Of all the presenting complained asked of the respondents, highest (18.5%) proportion was for toothache. Majority (71.3%) of the respondents affirmed that cost of transportation and long distance was the barrier for attending dental clinic. The rate of attendance (χ = 8.9; p = 0.03) and time of last visit (T =2.84; p = 0.01) was affected by the age of the respondents
 Conclusions: There was poor attendance to dental clinic by elderly in Benin City mainly due to cost of transportation and long distance. Age was related to poor attendance and time of visitation for attendance.
 Key words: Dental clinic, attendance, elderly