Comorbidities in patients requiring dental extraction

ABSTRACT

A cross-sectional study was conducted at the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery of Jinnah Medical and Dental College, Karachi [JMDC] to determine the frequency of comorbidities that may affect the dental extraction in patients older than 35 years of age. A total of 3986 patients visited the oral surgery OPD of JMDC during the period of December 2010 to October 2011. The history charts of 1867 patients aged 35 years and above were included in the study. The patient's medical and drug history was recorded on a predesigned Proforma to find out the frequency of different medical problems including hypertension, diabetes mellitus, hepatitis, anemia, gastrointestinal disorders, cardiac disorders, renal disorders and blood dyscrasias. From a total of 1,867 patients, 436 patients [23.4%] were having comorbidities. The age of patients ranged from 30 to 80 years with the mean age of 39.6 years. The majority of them [54%] were in the 4th to 6th decades of life. There were 898 male patients [48.1%] and 969 females [51.9%]. In this study, hypertension was the most prevalent comorbid accounting for [236/1867, 12.6%] patients, followed by diabetes mellitus [126/1867, 6.74%], peptic ulcer [48/1867, 2.57%] and ischemic heart disease [16/1867, 0.85%].It is very important for the attending clinicians to have an exact knowledge of the patient's medical condition, although the prevalence of patients having comorbidities was not very high, the dentist must bear in mind that some of these patients may have contraindications to certain surgical procedures and others may require special modifications in standard treatment protocols to provide safe and effective dental treatment in these groups of patients