Comparison of patient's demand and need to receive restorative dental services

Survey of patients’ demand and need to receive dental services, has a special role in providing these services and meeting the community therapeutic needs. This study compares patients’ demand and need to receive restorative dental services in a dental clinic in Isfahan. This was a descriptive-cross sectional study and data gathering was by checklist. The data of identified demands and needs of restorative dental services of refered patients to Farhangian dental clinic chosen by non-‎random ‎consecutive sampling during three months were entered into statistical software SPSS (version 17. Chi-square test was used for data analyzing. P <0.05 was considered as significant level. Totally 1040 patients were studied that included 603 peoples (58.2 %) were in 15-49 years age group. The most referring reason of patients were respectively related to endodontic (24.8%), restorative and prosthetic included 193 peoples (each 18.5 %) and periodontics included 133 peoples (12.8%) and the least of referring reason was oral diseases included 7 peoples (0.7 %). 1027 patients (98.75%) needed to restorative dental services but just 195 patients (18.8%) had demand for these services (p<0.05). Most people do not visit dentist until they have tooth pain that indicate lack of knowledge of patients in role of preventive examination and periodic controls in increasing oral health. Many patients are not aware of their dental services needs. To meet these services, patients’ demand of receiving the services should be increased. Thus, there would be establisged a balance between the demands and real needs of people.