Medicina comunitaria y educación para la salud

Abstracto

The Dental Surgeons in the Hospital and their Professional Areas in Brazil: Hospitalization Units, Surgical Centers and Intensive Care Units

Miranda AF

The lack of effective policies regarding the maintenance of oral health in hospitals helps increasing systemic diseases and damages to the patients’ health. The dentist plays a key role in diagnosing, planning and conducting clinical interdisciplinary approaches focused on the quality of life of these patients. The aim of the current study is to discuss the hospital dentistry context by emphasizing the regulation of this practice and its action field, the oral/ systemic health relation, the preventive clinical procedures, as well as the clinical difficulties and the brief guidelines, through a literature review. Scientific articles linked to hospital dentistry practices were searched in bibliographic databases and analyzed. The inclusion criteria comprised articles published in Portuguese and English indexed at the LiLACS, SciELO and PubMed databases between 2007 and 2016, the legislation about the theme and clinical experience. The search gathered 35 references. It was concluded that it is demanding to train all hospital staff and the dental surgeon on how to promote oral health, as well as to know the impact of these oral issues on the patients’ systemic health and to implement specific protocols about the herein described theme in every hospital.