Over the last few decades, oral health care has become a greater priority as people live longer with serious medical conditions and disabilities and the dentist must be aware of them to provide safe and effective oral care. Objective: To study the prevalence of medical comorbidities in patients seeking dental treatments. Design: A crosssectional observational study. Methods: The study was conducted at the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery of Dental College and hospital in north India

more »

... starting from april 2014 to march 2016 for the presence of medically compromised conditions. Demographic data of the patients was also collected to determine the frequency of comorbidities that may affect the dental patients older than 30 years of age. Results: A total of 7216 patients visited the oral surgery OPD during the period of april 2014 to march 2016. 5040 patients aged 30 years and above were included in the study. From a total of 5040 patients, 1336 patients (26.5%) were having comorbidities. The age of patients ranged from 30 to 80 years with the mean age ± SD of 45.2 ± 11.6 years. The majority of them (54%) were in the 4th to 6th decades of life. There were 694 male patients (51.95%) and 642 female patients (48.05%). In this study, hypertension was the most prevalent comorbidity accounting for 13.8% of total patients followed by diabetes mellitus( 8.29%) and ischaemic heart disease which accounted for 7.28%.Within the strata of medically compromised individuals , prevalence of hypertension was recorded as high as 52.02 %, followed by diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease which has prevalence of 31.29% and 24.27% respectively. Conclusion: It is very important for the attending clinicians to have an exact knowl¬edge of the patient's medical conditions to provide safe and effective dental treatment.