Palliative Care In Dentistry In The Indian Scenario

Abstract

Background: Palliative care is mostly needed for elderly people and the children too, oral cavity should be taken proper care of or else it can lead to various number of oral diseases. It is seen that more awareness needs to be spread in order to gain knowledge about palliative care.

Aim: The aim of the study is to analyse the awareness and the use of Palliative Care in the Indian scenario.

Methods and Materials: This questionnaire based survey was conducted among 117 students of Saveetha Dental College. The questionnaire consisted of questions that addressed the knowledge and awareness of Palliative Care. All the responses were received and tabulated and the results were represented graphically. The statistics were done using SPSS software, chi-square test was used to check the association and P value of 0.05 was said to be statistically significant.

Results: The result showed that the people of age upto 20 years around 66 people nearly 56.41% of them were aware of the term Palliative Care in dentistry. 28.21% that 33 weren’t aware of palliative care. People of age 20-40 only 1.71% are aware, 40-60 year old 5.98% are aware of Palliative Care.

Conclusion: The findings of the present study show that the young generation is aware of Palliative care in dentistry. In spite of the limitations our study was able to record the amount of data collected now for creating awareness of palliative care.