Patterns of edentulism in Egas Moniz University Dental Clinic population

Abstract

Introduction: Multiple factors like age, gender and sociocultural factors contribute to tooth loss [1–3]. Despite improved healthcare, 29,9% of the Portuguese population has more than 6 teeth missing [4]. Apart from the study of Carneiro [1] and Forjaz [5] there is a lack of Portuguese studies on this issue. Our goal is to portray edentulism in a sample of patients at Egas Moniz University Dental Clinic (EMUDC) in Almada.

Materials and methods: Prior to data collecting approval by the ethics committee of the Instituto Universitário Egas Moniz was obtained. From November 2015 to March 2018 a random sample on 100 individuals from a total of 350 patients of the prosthodontic clinic of the EMUDC was selected. These were evaluated and characterized by: age, sex, Kennedy classification and Kennedy modification. A descriptive statistical analysis with crosstabs procedures was applied to check frequencies using the SPSS Statistics 20.0 software.

Results: The average age was 61,1. 60% of the sample were women. In the maxilla (Table 1), the most common Kennedy classification was III (31%) with an average modification of 1,03. For women a tie between Kennedýs class II and III (25% each) was found making both the most common. For men Kennedýs class III (40%) was the most common while Class IV was not found in the studied population. For the mandible (Table 2) the most common Kennedy classification was I (37%) for both men and women. Class IV was not found in women and it was the least found in men (2,5%).

Discussion/Conclusion: Most of the edentulous arches are in the mandible (87 %), as concluded by several authors [2,3,5,6]. The most prevalent of edentulous class was Kennedy's class III (31%) and the lowest class IV (1,5%) [2,6]. Similarly, to Carneiro in 2013 [1], Forjaz in 2016 [5] and Souza in 2015 in a Brazilian population [3] patients had an average age of 59 and 68 % were women.