Objective: Characterising the oral health of patients undergoing different types of dialysis or kidney transplant.
Materials and methods: This was a descriptive study which involved multivariate analysis of information taken from an initial database regarding 336 patients; 49 % were receiving haemodialysis, 34 % peritoneal dialysis, 7 % pre-dialysis and 10 % kidney transplant. Illustrative variables were age, gender, marital status, occupation, education, oral hygiene and gingival indexes, flossing, decayed, missing, and filled teeth (DMFT) index, renal disease aetiology and type of dialysis being received. A hierarchical clustering method was used.
Results: Four groups of patients were identified. Class 1 (37.8 %) consisted of unmarried men having had secondary education and having good oral hygiene, very high DMFT, with haemodialysis but no stomatological pathology. Class 2 (20.24 %) included haemodialysis patients who had received elementary education, were unemployed, had inadequate oral hygiene, severe gingivitis, very high DMF rate and high Candida frequency. Class 3 (31.2 %) included women undergoing peritoneal dialysis who were over 70 years old, had received elementary education, were housewives, edentulous and who had loss of vertical dimension. Class 4 (10.7 %) included men who had received renal transplant, secondary education and were employees; one third of them were edentulous and had soft tissue alterations.
Conclusion: Multivariate analysis indicated a possible relationship between the type of dialysis received and patients' socioeconomic characteristics regarding oral health status.