Profile of Oncological Patients Needing Rehabilitation by Dental and Bucomaxillofacial Prostheses in a Brazilian Subpopulation

Abstract

Purpose: This study aimed to identify the profile of cancer patients in need of rehabilitation with oral and/or buccomaxillofacial prostheses, as well as to evaluate the possible reasons for not concluding the rehabilitation.Materials & Methods: This is a retrospective observational study carried out at the Dentistry Department of the Mato Grosso Cancer Hospital, Cuiabá, MT, Brazil, through the evaluation of the medical records of patients attended from April 2017 to November 2019.Results: The study population comprised 256 patients who met the research inclusion criteria. It was found that 30.90% of the patients were elderly, 65.6% were men, 70.3% brown, 27.3% retired, 49.2% married and 52% coming from municipalities of the interior of the state of Mato Grosso. From the total of patients, 67.23% reported smoking and 53.9% alcohol consumption. As for the location of the tumor, 57.4% had it in the head and neck region, 55.1% of which were epidermoid carcinoma and in 28.9% of cases the disease stage was IV. Most of the patients (60.2%) completed prosthetic rehabilitation, with total prostheses predominating. The main reasons for not completing the rehabilitation were the patient's death and weakness.Conclusions: Patients who started treatment in more advanced stages of cancer had a greater chance of not completing the prosthetic rehabilitation, and the incompletion of rehabilitation treatment was directly related to the patients’ death and the state of weakness.