Estudio de salud bucodental en pacientes diabéticos ingresados en el Servicio de Medicina Interna del Hospital Morales Meseguer

Abstract

Introduction: The Special Patients and Gerodontology Unit from the Dentistry Faculty, together with the Internal Medicine Service and the Cardiology section of the Morales Meseguer University Hospital, have carried out a study with diabetic patients admitted to hospitalization fromNovember, 27 th 2020 to July, 21 st 2021. Objectives: The main objective is to study the oral health of diabetic patients who have been admitted to the hospital and its relationship with the biomarkers changes they have presented. As secondary objectives, we have studied whether patients with deficient oral health are readmit more and/or their hospitalization periods are longer. Material and methods: The inclusion criteria are: having diabetes mellitus (DM) and being hospitalized in the Internal Medicine and Cardiology services. All patients underwent an analysis with biochemistry, blood count, glycated hemoglobin, urine and orthopantomography, which is assessed by two dentists trained and calibrated for this study. The data has been entered into an Excel database with a codified number, making the study pseudo-anonymous. Subsequently, the data have been refined for the pertinent statistical analyzes carried out in the Department of Statistics of the Faculty of Medicine of Murcia and in the University of Castilla La Mancha, by Dr. Virgilio Gómez Rubio. Results: Our sample consists of n=35 patients, 71.43% men and 28.57% women. The mean age is 69.31 years (SD 14.53). The glycemic control of the patients can be improved, presenting plasma glycemia data above targets by 60%. There is polypharmacy in 100% of patients. Poor oral health is observed in 88.6% of diabetic patients studied. 60% had periodontitis, 71.4% caries and 57.1% one or more periapical lesions. It has been observed that there could be a relationship between oral health and length of stay, as well as smoking, C-reactive protein (CRP), vitamin D, DM, alcoholism and hypertension. However, statistical significance has not been reached with the rest of the variables studied. Statistically significant results have been obtained for the values of length of stay and smoking (p value = 0.0007), for readmission and smoking (p value =0.0104), for caries and potassium (p value = 0.0.030) and for periodontitis. and Thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) (p value = 0.0077). Conclusion: The prevalence of oral pathology in hospitalized patients is high and its interaction with the patient's pathologies should be better studied. The glycemic control of the patients can be improved, an evaluation by a dentist is recommended to help in the early detection of pathology. The data obtained on readmission at 3 months were statistically significant for smoking with a p value of 0.0104, therefore, by promoting smoking cessation programs, readmissions of these patients could be reduced, along with improving oral health, and thus Also, improve glycemic control.