Presence of Behavioural Risk Factors Among Periodontitis Patients in Suva, Fiji

Periodontitis is a chronic infectious inflammatory disease of the gingiva and supporting structures of the teeth caused by specific bacteria such as Porphyromonas gingivalis. Periodontitis patients can have one or more systemic diseases. Both periodontal diseases and systemic diseases share mutual risk factors including alcohol consumption, smoking of tobacco etc. Due to lack of previous study, this descriptive study is aimed to identify the presence of behavioural risk factors among periodontitis patients with and without systemic disease in Suva, Fiji. This is a descriptive study on periodontitis patients with complete self-reported systemic disease history carried out in two dental clinics operated by the Fiji National University (FNU). Periodontitis patients with or without selfreported systemic disease history were included in this study. Patients without periodontitis were excluded from this study. The patient clinical records are recorded from 1st January 2013 to 31st December 2014. Chi square test was used to determine use of behavioural risk factors (such as use of tobacco, use of alcohol and the use of betel-nut), among the periodontitis patients with and without systemic disease. And Binary logistic regression was used to calculate odds ratio with their 95% Confidence Intervals to define any association between dependent variable and independent variables. A p-value less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Majority of patients aged 40-64 years old and 57% were female. The present study did not show any statistically significant association between use of tobacco and use of betel-nut among periodontitis patients with and without systemic disease, however, use of alcohol among the periodontitis patients with and without systemic disease was statistically significant (p=0.022). Among all the other behavioural risk factors such as use of tobacco and betel-nut, only the use of alcohol among periodontitis patients with and without systemic diseases was statistically significant.