Oral health care for patients with hereditary coagulopathies

the students’ contribution to the re-structuring of health care

Abstract

Due to their increased risk of bleeding during dental procedures, patients diagnosed with hereditary coagulopathies or thrombopathies often have difficulty in accessing dental care in primary health care. Some centres specialised in the treatment of these diseases have a dentist as part of the multidisciplinary team, making most patients undergo dental follow-up in such services. This study aims to report the experience of undergraduate and graduate students in dentistry at the Federal University of Paraná in the re-opening of the dental outpatient clinic for patients with hereditary coagulopathies and thrombopathies in the State of Paraná. With the retirement of the dentist accounting for local dental care, the patients were left unattended. To meet the repressed demand, the dental outpatient clinic was re-opened as an extramural activity for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in dentistry. This fact made it possible to improve the students’ care for patients with systemic impairment, in addition to resuming dental care for patients with predisposition to haemorrhage. The re-opening of a highly complex clinic as a field of academic practice is atypical, as the process commonly takes place in reverse order, that is, with the student entering well-established service. In the present experience, the students played a fundamental role in the re-establishment of dental care at the blood centre.