Annals and Essences of Dentistry
Open Access
ISSN: 0975-8798, 0976-156X
ISSN: 0975-8798, 0976-156X
Suyash Vyas, Deepali Agrawal, Alpana Tiwari, Surabhi Chetana
Aims and objectives: The aim and objectives of the study was to assess awareness of effects of tobacco on oral health, general health and oral cancer in routine dental practice and to assess awareness of effects of tobacco among smokers and smokeless tobacco users. Materials and methods:-A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect information from 200 outpatients attending the department of Oral Medicine and Radiology, Peoples Dental Academy and Hospital, Bhopal, India with present or past history of smokeless or smoking form of tobacco. The questionnaire was divided into four parts demographic data, habits, awareness and practice of mouth self-examination. Data was analyzed using Chi-squared (χ2) test. Results: In our study majority of the patients were male 131(65.5%%), 35-60 years old (60%) with higher education level (38%). This implies that adult males were more common users of tobacco though being well educated. Smoking and smokeless form usage was found to be 66% & 34% with 89% as current users and more than 5 intakes /day (61%) as the most common frequency of usage. Only 11% of patients were past users and aware about ill-effects of tobacco. Television and radio followed by the news paper are the most effective means of approaching people for creating awareness on tobacco health effects among large mass population. The association between the response given for ‘smoking form can cause mouth cancer’, ‘can smoking cause heart, lung disease’ and the use of different forms of tobacco was found to be statistically significant in the study sample (P<0.05). In our study, out of 200 subjects, 84% patients never practiced mouth self-examination and remaining 16 % had noticed only stains or debris on their teeth.
Published Date: 2017-06-30;