Dental care utilization by diabetics according to the Korea Health Panel Survey

Abstract

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Objectives: The objective of this study was to examine the difference in dental care utilization between diabetics (diabetes group) and nondiabetics (normal group). Methods: We examined the data of 5108 subjects enrolled in the Korea Health Panel Survey, every year for three years between 2010 and 2012. Of these, 458 subjects were included in the diabetes group and 458 in the normal group using the propensity score matching method to control confounding variables. To compare dental care utilization by the diabetes and normal groups, we examined the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) using a generalized estimating equation. Results: We found that the odds of dental care utilization by the diabetes group compared with the normal group was significantly high (OR=1.82, 95% CI: 1.60-2.09). The result was consistent according to sensitivity analysis (OR=1.96, 95% CI: 1.63-2.35). Conclusions: Dental care utilization by the diabetes group was 82% higher than that by the normal group. Therefore, patients with diabetes need to be more concerned about oral health care. 4) 특히 혈당 조절이 되지 않는 환자에서 치주질환의 심도(severity)는 증가하였 으나 이환되는 범위에는 영향을 미치지 않으며, 당뇨병의 유형에 관계없이 당뇨병 환자는 정상군에 비해 치주조직의 파괴가 유의하 게 증가한다고 보고된 바 있다 5). 당뇨병과 치주질환의 관련성 및 영향요인에 대해서는 오래전 부터 많이 연구되어 왔다 6). 이러한 연구들을 통해 당뇨병군이 정 상군에 비해 치과 이용률이 높을 것으로 예상되지만 당뇨병을 가 진 대상자가 치과를 얼마만큼 이용했는지에 관한 국내연구는 거의