ORAL HYGIENE

Objective: To observe the status of oral hygiene and its association with otherfactors in patients visiting Hamdard University Dental Hospital. Study Design: It was adescriptive type of study. Place and Duration of study: The study was carried out at HamdardUniversity Dental Hospital, Karachi. Total duration of this study was one year. Methodology: Nonprobability purposive sampling technique was used. Total 581 patients were included in thisstudy, after taking consent structured questionnaire was administered to evaluate informationfrom all patients. Then patients were divided into three groups on the basis of their oral hygienestatus. Results: In this study 228 were males while 353 were females. In males only 6.1% patientshad good oral hygiene while 28.5% & 62.2% had fair and poor oral hygiene respectively. Infemales 8.2% had good oral hygiene while 39.6% & 18.13% had fair and poor oral hygienerespectively. Among males 88.1% use tooth brush while 3.5% use finger for teeth cleaning whilein females this ratio was 91.7% 7 3.3%. Conclusions: In males frequency of poor oral hygienewas comparatively high which may be linked to smoking and dietary habits.