Subjective and Objective Treatment Needs Assessment in Patients Attending, M.N DAV Dental College and Hospital Solan, Himachal Pradesh

Abstract

Objective: This study is planned on a smaller scale to compare the felt need and normative need among subjects attending Dental Hospital Solan. This an effort to provide essential oral health care to the people of Solan on a superior scale in the future, based on accumulated data, which will facilitate the essential shift from the predominately normative assessment of the need to the incorporation of professionally defined into patientdefined need. Method: Subjective data was obtained by interview method, while the objective need was assessed by a dental professional on a structured format with predefined indices from randomly selected patients from OPD of DAV Dental College and Hospital Solan. Results: The majority of patients were from urban areas, graduate, female, and in the age group of 24-35 years. The most common subjective need was found filling and RC (30.7%). The most common objective need was scaling (36.2%). Maximum agreement between subjective and objective need was found in subjects from the urban area, educated, females, and in case of chief complaint of decayed teeth (44.7%) and the discrepancy was found maximum in case of chief s of periodontal problem and uneducated people from the rural area. Conclusion: This present study indicates low awareness among the population .there was a large discrepancy between subjective and objective treatment needs. The utilization of dental services should therefore be improved not only by providing better dental facilities but to a greater extent by increasing people’s awareness and knowledge of their own dental disorders.