Absentismo laboral por motivos orais e avaliação da qualidade de vida relacionada com a saúde oral numa amostra de funcionários da empresa PSA Peugeot/Citroën de Mangualde

Abstract

Introduction: The world's population has been taking better care of their oral health. However, there is still a high rate of the population that neglects their oral health, and don’t recognize its value as being one of the essential factors for a complete good state of health and well-being. Objectives: The objectives of this study was to quantify the work absenteeism due to oral reasons of workers of the PSA Peugeot/Citroën Enterprise of Mangualde, the possible personal repercussions resulting from such labor absenteeism and what are the main reasons for this same absenteeism, as well as analyzing which oral health behaviors do these company workers present. Another objective was to evaluate the oral health related quality of life of these workers. Materials and methods: We designed a cross-sectional epidemiological study with the application of a questionnaire in a sample of 310 employees of PSA Peugeot/Citroën Enterprise of Mangualde, as well as the application of the OHIP-14 scale to assess the oral health-related quality of life. For the statistical analysis we used the statistical program SPSS 20.0. Results: We found a prevalence of absenteeism of 11.6% due to oral reasons being toothache the main factor involved (63.6%). A total of 280 hours of work were lost and 580€ were deducted in the worker’s salaries due to the absenteeism. The impact of oral health on the quality of life of the sample is relatively low and the main dimensions affected were the "Pain" and "Psychological Discomfort ". Conclusions: A low rate of absenteeism and a low impact on labor by oral health reasons were recorded, however more studies in the European Union and Portugal are needed to establish more conclusive comparisons and results. According to similar studies, we can verify that in our sample the main dimensions affected were the "Pain" and "Psychological Discomfort" and that the impact of oral health on the quality of life is relatively low.

Date of Award	2012
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Jorge Leitão (Supervisor) & Nélio Jorge Veiga (Co-Supervisor)