dental health status of hiv-positive patients and related variables in southeast iran

Background: different factors can be responsible for the increased prevalence of dental caries and missing teeth in hiv-positive patients. objectives: this study evaluates dental health status and its relationship with social, behavioral, and medical factors in hiv-positive patients under the coverage of zahedan university of medical sciences in southeast iran. patients and methods: in a cross-sectional study, the dental health status of 119 hiv-positive patients was assessed in accordance withwhoindices and included decayed, missing, and filled teeth (dmft). a questionnaire on different social, behavioral, and medical variables was filled out for every case and the relationship and correlation of the variables to dental health status were investigated using one-way anova, the kruskalwallis test, the t-test, the mann-whitney test, spearman’s rho correlation coefficient, and pearson correlation. results: the mean value of dmft index was 11.87±8.08, where the mean values of decayed and missing teeth were 8.42±5.44 and 3.43 ± 4.07, respectively. dmft index, decayed, and missing teeth correlated only with age (p < 0.0001, p = 0.009, p < 0.0001) and duration of hiv involvement (p = 0.004, p = 0.031, p = 0.007). conclusions: the dental health status of hiv-positive patients in this region was almost inappropriate. most social, behavioral, and medical factors had no influence on dental health; only a correlation between dental health, age, and duration of hiv involvement was observed.