SATISFACTION WITH DENTAL APPEARANCE AND DESIRED ESTHETIC TREATMENT IN SAUDI DENTAL PATIENTS

Ahmed Saleh Ahmed Alghamdi*

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Understanding of factors influencing patients’ satisfaction towards their dental appearance could enhance treatment planning in a proper way that would improve the success of esthetic treatment. This study aimed to assess the satisfaction with dental appearance, desired treatments to improve dental esthetics and background factors influencing satisfaction with dental appearance. Methods: This is a cross sectional study included 172 patients attended public dental clinics in Albaha city. The data collected by interviews with a pretested structured questionnaire. The logistic regression modeling was conducted to assess the association between patients’ satisfaction and background factors. Results: The majority of study participants were unsatisfied with their general dental appearance. About 62% of study participants were unsatisfied with the color of their teeth, and 23.8% felt that their teeth are crowded. The young participants in 18-34 age group were 3.7 times more likely to be unsatisfied with their dental appearance than participants who were ≥ 55 years old (P value = 0.001). The women were 2.6 times more likely to be unsatisfied with their dental appearance than men (P value = 0.009). The participants who had a post-secondary level of education were 1.3 more likely to be unsatisfied with their dental appearance, in comparison to those with primary/secondary level of education. Conclusion: The majority of the dental patients in Albaha city were dissatisfied with their dental appearance. This dissatisfaction was more expressed by young, women and highly educated patients.

Keywords: Understanding of factors Albaha city.