Chief Complaint in A Dental and Maxillofacial Surgery Department in Abuja Nigeria

Chief complaints in the dental clinic are a series of complaints that a patient presents with in order of severity that needs urgent attention. The knowledge of chief complaints enables the clinician to focus appropriately on the area of dental challenge to treat his patient’s immediate complaint and plan preventive management. This is a retrospective study of cases that presented at the Dental and Maxillofacial Surgery department of State House Clinic from 2014 to 2021. Various Chief complaints that patients presented with in the clinic were prepared and used to review case files of patients. Statistical Package for social science (SPSS) version 21 was used to analyse the data collected; the relationship between chief complaints and age-group by sex of patients was examined. Toothaches was the most common chief complaints reported at 43.3% and this was more in females at 50.9%. Among the female sex, those within the age of 21-30 years reported more toothaches, while among the male sex those within 31-40 years of age reported more toothaches complaints and this was statistically significate.

The limitation of this study was that the sample size was small, and the study was conducted in one dental clinic only in Abuja. Thus, this might not be a complete reflection of pattern of chief complaints in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria. Health planners, policy makers including non-governmental agencies should be interested in further studies since the result could be used in planning for dental needs of the populace.

Keywords: Chief complaints; Toothaches; State house clinic