Comportamiento en salud oral según el índice hiroshima university dental behavior inventory (hu-dbi) aplicado a los estudiantes de la Facultad de Odontología de la Universidad de Cuenca del ciclo lectivo marzo 2022 - agosto 2022

Abstract

Background: oral diseases are an important public health problem, which are related to general health, so students must be well trained to provide promotion, prevention, care and recovery to the population to achieve oral health. In the current situation of COVID-19 pandemic, education has been modified to such an extent that it may be responsible for generating a learning gap in health behaviors for students. Objective: To determine the oral health behavior, according to the Hiroshima University Dental Behavior Inventory (HU-DBI) index of the students of the Faculty of Dentistry of the Universidad de Cuenca for the school year March 2022 - August 2022. Method: observational and descriptive cross-sectional study. A 20-item questionnaire was used with dichotomous responses ("agree" or "disagree"), to examine oral health attitudes and behaviors, where, the maximum score to be obtained is 19. The survey was applied to all students from first to fifth year of the career, the total number of students surveyed was 412. Results: there was a predominance of females with a total of 286 (69.4%) compared to 126 males (30.6%), the most frequent age group was 21 to 24 years old with 213 students (51 .7%). In relation to the preclinical students, the test scores were 15.12±2.07 and for the clinical students 15.45±1.75. The only significant difference found is observed in the index related to sex, where women (15.39±1.77) present a higher value than men (14.94±2.28). The variables of socioeconomic status, the study mesh, origin, age and year of study, present a non-significant difference. Conclusions: the results indicate that the students of the Faculty of Dentistry of the University of Cuenca have good behaviors in oral health according to the HU-DBI index (15.25 ±1.95), which highlights the good care of their health and oral hygiene as future health professionals.