Patients On Hypoglycemic Drugs and Presence of Dental Caries

Abstract

Introduction: Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disorder characterised by increase in plasma glucose level. It has been associated with dental caries as it causes decrease in salivary flow rate due to metabolic alterations. Patients on hypoglycemic drugs due to uncontrolled diabetes have shown an increase in incidence of dental caries than those who have controlled diabetes.

Aim: The aim of this study is to assess the presence of dental caries in patients on hypoglycemic drugs.

Materials and methods: A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted using patient records from Saveetha Dental College, Chennai after reviewing and analysing the data of 86000 patients between June 2019 and March 2021. Microsoft Excel® was used to tabulate the data. Data was then exported to the Statistical Package for Social Sciences for Windows (Version 19, 2010) for further analysis.

Results: The final data consisted of data sets from 7876 patients who were using hypoglycemic drugs. Only 10.35% of patients with diabetes were caries free whereas the remaining 89.65% had dental caries. The most common type of caries was class 1 dental caries (47.07%) and the least common type was class 6 caries (1.187%).

Conclusion: Within the limits of the study, it can be concluded that there is a high incidence of dental caries among those taking hypoglycemic drugs.