Factors associated with self-medication in a brazilian emergency dental service

Objective: To investigate factors associated with self-medication by patients treated at a public emergency dental service in Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil. Method: A questionnaire was applied to174 patients who have been treated in the emergency dental service, with information about gender, age and specific questions about previous consumption of medicines, medicinal herbs or other substances to relieve dental pain. Clinical diagnosis was established by a single dentist. Bivariate analysis and multivariate Poisson regression with robust variance were carried out in SPSS 18.0 software for Windows. The study was approved by the local Human Research Ethics Committee. Results: The mean age of the patients was 32.6 (±12.0) years and 51.8% were female. Among the participants in the survey, 81.7% reported self-medication. Age (p=0.83), duration of pain (p=0.21) and gender (p=0.85) were not associated. Frequency of self-medication was higher (p=0.04) among individuals with pulpitis (86.8%) and periapical abscess (84.7%). Only clinical diagnosis was associated with self-medication in the multivariate Poisson analysis. Patients with pulpitis reported 2.3 times more self-medication (IC95% 1.1-5.0; p=0.03) than individuals with other diagnoses. Conclusion: Self-medication was an important health problem in the studied this surveyed group. Clinical diagnosis was the only factor that influenced this phenomenon.