Oral Health (KAP Model) Status and Tobacco Habits in Employees’ State Insurance Patients Visiting a Dental College in North India: A Cross-sectional Study

Background: Various oral health-related practices, perceptions, and behavioral patterns among the individuals in the society determine the treatment needs to be adopted among the dentists, hospitals, and country as a whole. Objective: To access the knowledge, attitude, and practices regarding oral health and tobacco-related products. Design: Questionnaire-based cross-sectional study. Setting: All patients under Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) empanelment coming to the department from August 2018 to July 2019. Patients: The study consisted of 573 subjects who visited the outpatient department, of which 446 (77.8%) were males and 127 (22.2%) were females. Measurements: A self-prepared questionnaire was asked from the patients and the response rate was recorded and statistically analyzed using nonparametric tests, such as Chi-square and p value to arrive at the results. Results: It was observed that the subjects were maintaining oral health by cleaning their teeth with toothbrush and toothpaste in 549 (95.8%) individuals, changing their brush in > 1-month and ≤ 3-month categories with 270 (50.7%) response. It was also seen that the subjects considered oral health as the mirror of their whole body, i.e., in 89% and 84.4% of the individuals and were ready to go to the dentist (86.9%) in the near future regarding oral prophylaxis. Regarding tobacco habits, males (37.8%) were predominantly using tobacco as compared to females. Limitations: Being a single-centric study of the ESI patients, it does not reflect the overall status of the dental health of this kind of population on a pan-India level. So, more multicentric studies involving a large pool of individuals should be carried out. Conclusion: This study represents the first-of-a-kind information regarding the oral health of the ESI population in our country. More in-depth and larger sample-sized studies are required from other parts of India that could reflect the true oral status of this category of individuals so that treatment plans can be developed accordingly. Key messages: This article tends to formulate the oral hygiene perceptions, outlook, and execution of targeted occupants in an observational manner which can help in removing bottlenecks to reach an optimum level of dental health.