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