Evaluation of drug usage in patients referred to diagnostic dept. of Oral Medicine, Shaheed Beheshti dental school (2001-2002)

Patients referred for dental treatment may have some systemic diseases. The aim of this study was to assess the history of using medicine in the patients referred to dental school. Methods & Materials: In this descriptive epidemiologic investigation performed with cross sectional method and simple randomized sampling, data forms were completed with only one questionnaire. Age, gender and the history of medication were evaluated in 600 patients refer to Oral Medicine department. From the 600 referred patients, 56% were female and 44% were male. The range of age was from 15 to 75 years, most of the patients had 25-35 years of age. 34% of them had systemic disease. The most common disease in all of them were allergy (6.83%), gaster intestinal disease (6.33%), cardiac disease (5.5%) hypertension (4.16%), tyroid disease (3.63%) and renal disease, anemia-diabetes and arthroskeletal disease. 30.83% of the all were using drugs, The prevalence of using drug was different in the males and females. The most common drugs used by all of them was NSAID and analgesics – Antyhistamins, antibiotics. GI drugs, cardiac drugs, antihypertension and tyroid drugs had the next prevalence. In the present study, we found that there is high usage of drugs in patients who need dental treatments regarding to the probability of drugs interactions it’s necessary for dental students to become well educated in this aspect.