“Why Patients Delay Seeking Dental Treatment - A Survey”?

Abstract

Introduction: Patients, the world over, neglect their oral health and avoid visiting dentists unless they are faced with severe pain or discomfort. The reasons behind a patient’s procrastination for seeking dental help can be multifactorial and can be narrowed down to a few common fears and beliefs. An early study in the UK inferred that over one-third of dentate adults responded ‘I can’t be bothered really’ as a reason for putting off dental visiting (Todd JE, Walker AM, Dodd P.1978). The present study focuses on analyzing the factors that prevail in governing a patient’s hesitance to seek dental treatment, whether it is their first appointment or a revisit. Materials and Methods: In this study, we are going to use a survey to assess the physical and psychological and socio-economic barriers to oral health care. Methodology: The survey will be made online and distributed over internet websites that people commonly use. The survey will have some trick questions to reduce the number of invalid answers survey Results: The foremost reason why people avoided visiting dentists was that they were too busy. Second most common reason cited was the cost being high. Common beliefs, predominantly amongst female participants, was that dentist don’t listen, try to fool them into certain treatment procedures and demoralize them during visits. Discussion: Within the limitations of this study, we were able to ascertain that the most prevalent reason for avoiding a visit to a dental clinic was the ‘lack of time’ and the second most expressed reason regarded the expense involved. Most of the population examined visited a dentist less than once in two years and it was found that this factor was not governed by education levels or income, where it was seen that amidst our participants even the graduates and the higher income individuals failed to visit a dentist more often. On examining dental and prosthetic statuses, it was seen that most of the patients didn’t have any prostheses in their mouths, yet on checking their dental needs, it was found that they required some form of prosthesis ranging from a single crown to full dental rehabilitation (complete dentures).