PURPOSE: The assessment using the PSR (Periodontal Screening and Recording) of the prevalence and severity of and the basic treatment needs for periodontal disease in a group of pregnant women who attended the Preventive Dentistry Clinic at the School of Dentistry of Araraquara - UNESP. METHODS: Forty-one pregnant women of 16 to 37 years of age, were examined. The PSR index was evaluated with a suitable periodontal probe (Trinity - model 621-WHO) with index codes scores of from 0 to 4, capable of indicating the presence of the following conditions: periodontal health, bleeding on probing, calculus, shallow and deep pockets. These codes were attributed to each sextant and could be marked with an asterisk (*) to indicate the presence of gingival recession, furcation lesions, mobility or any other mucogingival alterations. RESULTS: It is shown that 100% of the pregnant women had some kind of gingival alteration, represented mainly by PSR code 2 (56.1%) and " * " (19.5%). The women in the youngest age groups, 15-19 and 20-24 years, had code 2 as their highest score with no sextant excluded. In the 25-29 age group, the PSR code 2 still prevailed (54.5%) although codes 3 and 4 were already appearing. The code " * " and the ocurrence of excluded sextants tended to increase in the oldest age group (30-37). In general, the affected sextants showed codes 1 and 2 more frequently, corresponding to 41.6% and 39.8% respectively, which represented a mean of 2.49 and 2.39 sextants affected in each pregnant woman. Regarding the treatment needs, 90.2% of the women needed some treatment beyond the preventive measures begun, including scaling and root planning and/or corrections of defective restorative margins (61%), and more complex treatment (29.2%). CONCLUSION: The meeting of the treatment needs during pregnancy must include special efforts to increase motivation and promote oral health, minimizing the possiblity of vertical transmission of pathogenic microrganisms to the child, and thus contributing to the primary prevention of the main oral diseases.
Periodontal index; Gingival diseases
