Accessibility to dental care for patients with special needs

Resumo

Introduction and objective: The aim of this study was to verify
the professionals’ perception about the accessibility to dental care
establishments for three types of patients with special needs: Diabetes,
AIDS, and Cerebral Paralysis patients, in the city of São Paulo. Material
and methods: This was a descriptive, cross-sectional study with a non
probabilistic sample. For the analysis, 107 dental care establishments
were selected and divided into two categories (private and insurance).
Each one of the establishments was randomly selected from a list
containing a total of 3,234 private and 2,015 insurance establishments.
The information for the study was based on phone conversations, when
a semi-structured interview was accomplished to verify the accessibility
for AIDS, Diabetes, and Cerebral Paralysis special need patients.
The analysis of the interviews’ content was executed according to the
methodology of Lefèvre and Lefèvre (2000) and in agreement with
the central idea. Results: From the total of participants, 55.14% were
female and 53.27% worked at a private clinic. In relation to the patients’
accessibility, 96.26% had already treated Diabetes patients, 55.14% AIDS
patients, and 28.97% Cerebral Paralysis patients. Conclusion: It can be
concluded that concerning to Diabetes patients, the main difficulty is
the clinical practice, mainly related to problems in blood coagulation.
For Cerebral Paralysis patients, the difficulties were related to personnel
training, establishment structure, and also clinical practice. For AIDS
patients, although difficulties in clinical practice were mentioned,
prejudice still seemed to be the major difficulty.