Oral Health and Dental Management

Abstract

Common Chief Complaints of Dental Patients at Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah City, Saudi Arabia

Khalid Al-Johani, Hanadi Lamfon, Hassan Abed, Mohammed Beyari

Background and aim: The chief complaints of the patients are an essential component during taking the history and treatment planning. This could be useful for several reasons, including monitoring of oral health services and measuring the effectiveness of the oral health awareness programmes. This paper aims to evaluate and address the most common chief complaints among a set of dental patients at the Faculty of Dentistry in Umm Al-Qura University (UQU), Makkah city, Saudi Arabia. Materials and methods: Data extraction forms including demographic variables, and chief complaints, were used to assess 3566 dental patients who visited the dental clinics at Umm Al-Qura University from January 2014 to August 2014. Results: The most common chief complaints recorded for the patient sample were dental pain (35.4%), routine check-up (13%), and dental decay (6.9%). Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that the chief complaint is an essential component of the dental history, with pain and decay being the most commonly reported.