Oral Health Status of Women During Pregnancy

Objectives: To assess the dental and oral health status and treatments needs of a pregnant population in Rome in order to quantify the need for care, providing at the same time data for future reference and possible future dental care provision considering that there has not been conducted a similar survey in our city. Methods: 40 institutionalized patients all living in Rome underwent a complete oral and dental examination following the WHO's criteria(World Health Organization, Oral health Surveys: Basic methods-4th ed.-WHO, Geneva(1997). Clinical examination and evaluation were conducted by 2 trained and certificated dentists supervised by a dental expert in oral indices and measures. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS Inc, ver. 13.0, Chicago, IL, USA. A p-value of less than 0.05 was considered significant. Results: The prevalence of edentulousness was 0%. Missing teeth were 49. Mean number of remaining teeth per subject was 27,3. Regarding CPI 4% of the sextants resulted healthy, 37% had gingival bleeding on probing, 44% had dental calculus, 13% periodontal pockets 4-5mm deep,2 % pockets 6 or more mm deep and 0% of the sextants were excluded. The oral hygiene of our patient group was evaluated using the Green Vermillon Semplified Index (Green J.C. and Vermillon J.R., 1964). 16% of patients showed values between 0.3 and 0.6, as evidence of a satisfactory state of oral hygiene (Group 1), 20% showed values between 0.7 and 1.8 as evidence of a medium degree of oral hygiene (Group 2); 64% reported values between 1.9 and 3.0 corresponding to a poor oral hygiene (Group 3). Conclusions: The findings illustrated a poor periodontal status and the need to establish a protocol of dental visits during pregnancy in order to guarantee a satisfactory state of oral hygiene.