Prevalence of conservative and endodontic treatments in patients affected by oncologic diseases. A retrospective clinical study

Aim To determine the prevalence of conservative and endodontic treatments administered to a cohort of patients with several types of cancer, and whether the condition was associated with other diseases, and to the use of medications, in a referral dental insti-tution over a 4-year period. Methodology A retrospective analysis was conducted using the medical records of 144 oncologic patients requesting dental treatment from January 2011 to January 2016. Dental therapies performed were divided in conservative and endodontic treatments. The variables recorded for each patient were demographic data, medical history, use of medications, administration of antibiotics before (prophylaxis) or after (therapy) dental treatment. The data were entered into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and analyzed using IBM SPSS package version 21.0 for Mac. Results The patients age ranged from 26 to 88 years and the male to female ratio was 0.58:1. A total of 431 dental treatments were performed on oncological patients and out of them 325 were conservative treatments performed in 70.2% of individuals and 106 were endodontic therapies performed in 29.8% of patients. Antibiotic prophylaxis was given to 27.7% of individuals, and antibiotic therapy was prescribed in 25% of treated cases. Breast cancer was the most common type of cancer in the overall group (51.4%) and among women (80.2%). In addition to oncological pathology all the patients included in this study were affected by one or more medical disorders. The prevalence of associated medical disorders increased with age, but was concentrated between the 4th and 5th decades. The most commonly associated systemic conditions were cardiovascular (21%) and rheumatic (21%) diseases. One hundred twenty-six patients were under medical prescriptions, mostly in the 5th–7th decades; 69.9% of the individuals received from 1 to 4 medications/day and among patients receiving more than 8 drugs/day the number of females was significantly higher (p < 0.05). Conclusions There is an increasing need for conservative treatment in patients who have cancer which is often associated with other medical conditions, and use of several medications. Dental practitioners should receive training to provide the best care possible and prevent complications.