Abstrakt
Aim: To assess oral hygiene practices in patients
attending the General Outpatient Department
(GOPD) of the University of Abuja Teaching
Hospital, Gwagwalada, Abuja.
Materials and Methods: This was a cross sectional
study of patients attending the GOPD of University
of Abuja Teaching Hospital, Gwagwalada, Abuja,
Nigeria. A semi structured pretested questionnaire
was administered to 416 consecutively recruited adult
patients that consented to participate in the study.
Data collected were analyzed using SPSS version
Results: The age ranged from 18 to 60 years with
the mean age being 33.22 years (SD = 10.11). About
55% of the participants were females while 45.4%
were males. Most (98.6%) of the respondents used
toothbrush to clean their teeth and 62.0% brush their
teeth twice a day. Only very few (1.7%) used dental
floss to clean the interdental area while most
respondents (92.1%) used toothpicks.. Half of the
respondents brush for over 3 minutes. Irrespective
of age groups or gender, most of our respondents
(64.2%) preferred soft brush while and 28.1%
preferred hard toothbrush. Just a little above half of
our respondents (52.2%) preferred using tooth brush
with big head while 40.1% preferred brushes with
small head. While a very good number (at least
93.9%) replace their toothbrushes within 6 months.
only one hundred and forty (33.7%) of our
respondents had ever visited dentist while fifty-five
(13.2%) did so within the past 12 months.
Conclusion: The oral hygiene practice among our
study population was fairly good but need to be
reinforced through various oral health education
programs and outreaches with more emphasis on the
use of dental floss and importance of regular visit to
the dentist.
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