Medicine prescription and local anesthesia for pregnant women: dentist’s profi le from Londrina, PR, Brazil.

Abstract

Purposes: a) Identify the profile of dentists from Londrina about drug prescription and local anesthesia indication during pregnancy. b) Verify if professional’s graduation time and specialization degree modulate the achievement of answers in agreement with dental literature. Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study was performed using 183 validated questionnaires with dentists from Londrina-PR collected from 2004 to 2005. Results: Acetominophen was recommended by 68% of professionals to pregnant women as an analgesic drug. Anti-infl ammatory drugs were not prescribed by 31,1% of the interviewed professionals, however the same number of professionals recommended other non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs, like Piroxicam and Nimesulide. Penicillins were indicated by 81,9% as the first choise of antimicrobial drugs. Most of the professionals did not indicate ansiolitic drugs during pregnancy, but the majority of them recommended Lidocaine and the use of vasoconstrictor associated with local anesthetics. Conclusions: Recent graduated (from less than 10 years ) and especialists were the professionals who had the major agreement to scientific literature. However, there were many doubts among dentists regarding dental prescription for pregnant women, especially from general dentists and older graduated ones. There is a great need of professional requalification to achieve a secure medicine and local anesthesia indication during pregnancy by dentists.