ORAL HEALTH ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS AMONG PATIENTS IN A DENTAL HOSPITAL IN ANKARA, TURKEY

Purpose: information about public’s knowledge and attitude about oral diseases and their prevention would indicate the need for education of the community. the objective of this study was to have a foresight about oral health attitude and behavior among adult patients in a state dental hospital, ankara. material and method: questionnaire was prepared using turkish version of hiroshima university dental behavioural inventory (hu-dbi) and additional 7 questions. 258 number of patients participated. edentulous patients and patients under 12 years old were kept out of the study. pearson’s chi- square,kruskall-wallis h and mann-whitney u tests were used to analyse the results. results: the average age was 33.0. of the participants, 51.2% was female and 48.8% was male. 14.3% of the patients was graduated from primary school, 12.1% secondary school, 36.4% high school, 3.9% open university, 33.3% university and post graduate. the mean hu-dbi score was 5.3 (out of 12). females had significantly higher hu-dbi scores than males (p=0.039). individuals brushing before sleep had significantly high scores (p=0.0001). females brushed their teeth before sleep more than males (p=0.019). females preferred medicine first more than males (p=0.019). statistically significant difference in prefering medicine first was determined in the group of primary school (p=0.012). as level of education increased, usage rate of dental floss increased (p=0.018). conclusions: oral health attitude and behavior of the population studied was not satisfactory. oral health education should be provided for the community.