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Relation between social drug use/abuse and dental disease in California, U.S.A.
Author(s) -
Silverstein Steven J.
Publication year - 1973
Publication title -
community dentistry and oral epidemiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.061
H-Index - 101
eISSN - 1600-0528
pISSN - 0301-5661
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0528.1973.tb01324.x
Subject(s) - medicine , heroin , drug , substance abuse , oral hygiene , psychiatry , dentistry
This study has explored the social drug use/abuse patterns associated with dental disease. Seventy‐seven subjects from the Berkeley Free Clinic were given questionnaires on their drug‐use habits and then were examined for both DMF‐T and OHI‐S scores. Ninety‐seven percent of the subjects indicated that they used one or more of the eight drugs being surveyed. The mean DMF‐T of the subjects was 13.2 and the OHI‐S was 2.61. The study indicated that persons who used barbiturates, miscellaneous hallucinogens and heroin have poorer oral hygiene than those in other categories. An unexpected finding was that subjects who used four or five of the surveyed drugs had lower DMF‐T and OHI‐S scores than those who used a lesser or a greater number of these drugs. The significance of these findings for an individual's oral health is not yet clear, but it is interesting that the oral hygiene index and DMF‐T index did not increase with the increasing number of drugs used, although the specific use of barbiturates, miscellaneous hallucinogens and heroin were related to higher OHI‐S scores. The lower OHI and DMF scores probably can be explained by the frequency of toothbrushing. Ninety‐five percent of the 4–5 drug‐use group brushed one or more times per day.