Periodontal status of temporarily institutionalized homeless adults and associated factors

Odontologia, Abstract The scope of this cross-sectional study was to describe the periodontal status and its asso-ciation with sociodemographic, oral-health relat-ed behaviors and use of drugs among temporarily institutionalized homeless adults. The data were collected through oral clinical examination and a questionnaire with 102 adults attending the only public institution for this group in Goi??nia, Goi??s, Brazil. The periodontal condition was measured by the presence of bleeding on probing, dental calcu-lus and pockets, according to the Community Peri-odontal Index (CPI). Chi-square test and Poisson regressions with robust variance were performed. The prevalence of CPI>1 was 83.3%. Approx-imately 68% of the sample had bleeding, 82.4% had calculus and 9.8% had periodontal pockets. In the bivariate analyses, those who reported having used illicit drugs had a higher prevalence of cal-culus; males and unmarried adults had a higher prevalence of pockets. In the adjusted analysis, in-dividuals who used dental floss had a lower prev-alence of bleeding (PR=0.58; 95%CI=0.35-0.96). The remaining covariates were not associated with the outcomes. It was concluded that the prevalence of periodontal alteration was high, the most fre-quent condition was calculus and the only inde-pendent association was between bleeding and the use of dental floss.