RESULTS
Seventy-eight (78) doctors, 61(78.2%) males and 17 (21.8%) females participated.
Table 1 shows the distribution of doctors by age, years of experience and position. Their year of practice was normally distributed with a mean of 8.43 (sd 5.21), both median and mode were 8.00.
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Table 1. Demograghic data of the respondents |
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Characteristic |
No |
% |
|
Age-group 25-35 36-45 >45 |
54 22 2 |
69.2 28.2 2.6 |
|
Sex Males Females |
61 17 |
78.2 21.8 |
|
Position Intern Registrar Snr registrar Consultant |
9 35 29 5 |
11.5 44.9 37.2 6.4 |
|
Year of practice 1-5 6-10 11-20 >20 |
25 27 23 1 |
32.9 35.5 30.3 1.3 |
Knowledge of oral manifestations: All of them agreed that HIV infection has oral manifestations. However, when asked to list three (3) oral lesions in HIV infection, 16 (20.5%) of them got three correct answers, 40 (51.3%) got two correct answers, 18 (23.1%) got one correct answer while 4 (5.1%) could not list any correct answer. There was no significant association with year of practice, position or sex and number of correct answers. Pseudomembranous candidosis referred to as "thrush" by a lot of the respondents was the most commonly listed lesion by all the doctors.
Management of oral health problems: of the 78 respondents, 59 (75.6%) agreed that their patients had complained of oral problems to them at one point or the other. Of the 59, only 18 of them had ever referred a patient to the dentist while others claimed they examined and treated with medications.
Forty-six (58.9%) of them claimed to have carried out oral examination on their patients at sometime. Of this 46, 36 of them said they could identify some oral lesions while 10 said they could not identify any lesion. Again, pseudomembranous candidosis was the most commonly identified lesion. Only one respondent claimed to have identified oral hairy leukoplakia while four of them identified ulcers (unspecified).
Pattern of dental referral: 18 doctors had referred patients for dental care. More than half of these (55.6%) had referred less than five patients, 6 (33.3%) claimed to have referred between five to ten patients while 2 (11.1%) claimed to have referred more than ten patients. There was a significant difference between genders in dental referral (Fisher exact- 0.006). None of the female doctors had ever referred patients for dental care whereas 14 of them claimed that they have had oral health complaints from their patients and 15(88.2%) of them agreed that routine dental checkups should be part of the management for HIV patients.
Attitude towards dental referral: 66 (84.6%) of the doctors agreed that HIV patients should have routine dental check up as part of their management while 12 (15.4%) of them felt routine dental checkups was unnecessary because in their opinion, the oral manifestations are not severe enough to require specialist attention. There was no significant difference between genders and attitude towards dental referral.