Oral health awareness among pregnant women in Greece

Aims: To evaluate the level of knowledge and awareness of pregnant women about the importance of oral health, the quality of care and treatment received within and out of pregnancy period.Methods: This is a questionnaire based prospective study of pregnant women during a 12 months period. We collected data regarding the knowledge of 520 women on oral health care during their pregnancy and the level of their awareness in such health issues. Results: The 74% believed that they had a good oral health. Most women (80%), preferred to trust their dentist for any potential dental issue. In total, 237 women didn’t visit a dentist (either planned or emergently) mainly because they perceived their symptoms as not “important” enough (57%). The analysis regarding the association between aspects of health and education (chi-square test), shows that the higher the educational status of the women, the better the general health status (p0.001), and the oral health (p0.001). With respect to bleeding, while the association prior to pregnancy is not statistically significant (p=0.257), during pregnancy is significant (p0.001) with incidents of bleeding increased in the tertiary education group.Conclusions: During the last few years of economic crisis emergency services kept on a relatively decent level with easy access for all patients. Even though 89.5% of the women in our study had public insurance, just 34 % were aware that dental care is provided freely.