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Dental Attendances to General Medical Practitioners in Wales: A 44 Year-Analysis

One-third of the UK population is composed of problem-oriented dental attenders, seeking dental care only when they have acute dental pain or problems. Patients seek urgent dental care from a range of health care professionals, including general medical practitioners. This study aimed to identify tr...

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Autores principales: Currie, C.C., Stone, S.J., Brocklehurst, P., Slade, G., Durham, J., Pearce, M.S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8935529/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34582311
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00220345211044108
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author Currie, C.C.
Stone, S.J.
Brocklehurst, P.
Slade, G.
Durham, J.
Pearce, M.S.
author_facet Currie, C.C.
Stone, S.J.
Brocklehurst, P.
Slade, G.
Durham, J.
Pearce, M.S.
author_sort Currie, C.C.
collection PubMed
description One-third of the UK population is composed of problem-oriented dental attenders, seeking dental care only when they have acute dental pain or problems. Patients seek urgent dental care from a range of health care professionals, including general medical practitioners. This study aimed to identify trends in dental attendance at Welsh medical practices over a 44-y period, specifically in relation to dental policy change and factors associated with repeat attendance. A retrospective observational study was completed via the nationwide Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank of visits to general medical practice in Wales. Read codes associated with dental diagnoses were extracted for patients attending their general medical practitioner between 1974 and 2017. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics and univariate and multivariable logistic regression. Over the 44-y period, there were 439,361 dental Read codes, accounting for 288,147 patient attendances. The overall attendance rate was 2.60 attendances per 1,000 patient-years (95% CI, 2.59 to 2.61). The attendance rate was negligible through 1987 but increased sharply to 5.0 per 1,000 patient-years in 2006 (95% CI, 4.94 to 5.09) before almost halving to 2.6 per 1,000 in 2017 (95% CI, 2.53 to 2.63) to a pattern that coincided with changes to National Health Service policies. Overall 26,312 patients were repeat attenders and were associated with living in an area classified as urban and deprived (odds ratio [OR], 1.22; 95% CI, 1.19 to 1.25; P < 0.0001) or rural (OR, 0.84; 95% CI, 0.83 to 0.85; P < 0.0001). Repeat attendance was associated with greater odds of having received an antibiotic prescription (OR, 2.53; 95% CI, 2.50 to 2.56; P < 0.0001) but lower odds of having been referred to another service (OR, 0.75; 95% CI, 0.70 to 0.81; P < 0.0001). Welsh patients’ reliance on medical care for dental problems was influenced by social deprivation and health policy. This indicates that future interventions to discourage dental attendance at medical practitioners should be targeted at those in the most deprived urban areas or rural areas. In addition, health policy may influence attendance rates positively and negatively and should be considered in the future when decisions related to policy change are made.
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spelling pubmed-89355292022-03-22 Dental Attendances to General Medical Practitioners in Wales: A 44 Year-Analysis Currie, C.C. Stone, S.J. Brocklehurst, P. Slade, G. Durham, J. Pearce, M.S. J Dent Res Research Reports One-third of the UK population is composed of problem-oriented dental attenders, seeking dental care only when they have acute dental pain or problems. Patients seek urgent dental care from a range of health care professionals, including general medical practitioners. This study aimed to identify trends in dental attendance at Welsh medical practices over a 44-y period, specifically in relation to dental policy change and factors associated with repeat attendance. A retrospective observational study was completed via the nationwide Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank of visits to general medical practice in Wales. Read codes associated with dental diagnoses were extracted for patients attending their general medical practitioner between 1974 and 2017. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics and univariate and multivariable logistic regression. Over the 44-y period, there were 439,361 dental Read codes, accounting for 288,147 patient attendances. The overall attendance rate was 2.60 attendances per 1,000 patient-years (95% CI, 2.59 to 2.61). The attendance rate was negligible through 1987 but increased sharply to 5.0 per 1,000 patient-years in 2006 (95% CI, 4.94 to 5.09) before almost halving to 2.6 per 1,000 in 2017 (95% CI, 2.53 to 2.63) to a pattern that coincided with changes to National Health Service policies. Overall 26,312 patients were repeat attenders and were associated with living in an area classified as urban and deprived (odds ratio [OR], 1.22; 95% CI, 1.19 to 1.25; P < 0.0001) or rural (OR, 0.84; 95% CI, 0.83 to 0.85; P < 0.0001). Repeat attendance was associated with greater odds of having received an antibiotic prescription (OR, 2.53; 95% CI, 2.50 to 2.56; P < 0.0001) but lower odds of having been referred to another service (OR, 0.75; 95% CI, 0.70 to 0.81; P < 0.0001). Welsh patients’ reliance on medical care for dental problems was influenced by social deprivation and health policy. This indicates that future interventions to discourage dental attendance at medical practitioners should be targeted at those in the most deprived urban areas or rural areas. In addition, health policy may influence attendance rates positively and negatively and should be considered in the future when decisions related to policy change are made. SAGE Publications 2021-09-28 2022-04 /pmc/articles/PMC8935529/ /pubmed/34582311 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00220345211044108 Text en © International Association for Dental Research and American Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Research Reports
Currie, C.C.
Stone, S.J.
Brocklehurst, P.
Slade, G.
Durham, J.
Pearce, M.S.
Dental Attendances to General Medical Practitioners in Wales: A 44 Year-Analysis
title Dental Attendances to General Medical Practitioners in Wales: A 44 Year-Analysis
title_full Dental Attendances to General Medical Practitioners in Wales: A 44 Year-Analysis
title_fullStr Dental Attendances to General Medical Practitioners in Wales: A 44 Year-Analysis
title_full_unstemmed Dental Attendances to General Medical Practitioners in Wales: A 44 Year-Analysis
title_short Dental Attendances to General Medical Practitioners in Wales: A 44 Year-Analysis
title_sort dental attendances to general medical practitioners in wales: a 44 year-analysis
topic Research Reports
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8935529/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34582311
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00220345211044108
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