Original scientific paper

The Prevalence and Type of Pain in Dental Patients

Ivana Oklješa
Nada Galić
Sanja Šegović
Božidar Pavelić
Irina Filipović-Zore
Ivica Anić

Abstract

Pain is known to be a frequent reason for the patient’s arrival to the dental clinic. The aim of this study was to determine how often patients come to the dental clinic because of toothache or pain in the oral cavity; how high the percentage of acute or chronic pain, and the distribution of the aforementioned pains according to the sex of the patients.
Examination of the frequency of pain in dental patients was carried out on a sample of 2,735 subjects during a period of approximately one year. Pain was determined in 16.49% of patients and the remaining 83.51% of patients were without pain. There were slightly more female patients (54%) than male (46%), although correlation between pain and sex of the patients was not statistically significant. The higher number of female patients was the result of the greater number of female patients admitted. With regard to the duration of pain, acute pain was significantly more frequent (around 84%) than chronic pain (around 16%). Within the structure of acute and chronic pain odontalgia was most frequent in 89% of all the acute pains and in 90% of all chronic pains, which was significantly more than all other types of pain. The frequency of acute odontalgia, with respect to the total number of admitted patients, amounted to 12.36% of patients and chronic odontalgia 2.38% of patients.

Keywords

acute pain; chronic pain; odontalgia; toothache

Hrčak ID:

1032

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/1032

Publication date:

15.3.2004.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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