Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the timing of dental care in elderly peruvians

Abstract

In Peru, there is low dental service use among older adults, in addition to a social gradient for use. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered complex scenarios characterized by inadequate access to health services, with greater impact on vulnerable population groups such as the elderly. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the time since last dental care visit among elderly Peruvians. It was a cross-sectional study conducted on a population of 5247 respondents in 2019, and 5066 respondents in 2020. The study considered the answers of people who responded to the question on the last time they had received dental care, extracting a total 4045 subjects for 2019 and 3943 for 2020. The dependent variable was time since last dental care measured in years, while the variables on health, geographic and sociodemographic characteristics were grouped within three dimensions. A descriptive bivariate and multivariate analysis was applied by means of multiple linear regression to analyze the behavior of the variables. Time since the last dental care visit was 7.93 years (SD=8.03) in 2019 and 7.94 years (SD=7.28) in 2020. A hierarchical multiple linear regression analysis was performed, where no variable in the 2019 model was significant; while for 2020, health, geographic, and sociodemographic characteristics variables were significant. In the analysis where the ‘year’ variable becomes independent, only model 4, which considers all variables, was valid (p=0.018). The variables ‘area of residence’ and ‘wealth index’ were also significant. To conclude, the 2020 pandemic year for COVID-19 had no impact on the time since last dental care visit among elderly Peruvians, though factors such as area of residence and wealth index were found to be associated with the time since last dental care visit.