Adherence of Periodontal Patients to Supportive Therapy at the University Clinics of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Aim of the Study: To determine the level of adherence of periodontal patients at the University Clinics of Kinshasa (CUK). Methodology: A cross-sectional study on adherence of periodontal patients to supportive therapy was conducted at CUK from 2016 to 2019. Patients who have suffered from periodontitis during the study period and benefited from a non-surgical periodontal treatment, aged at least 18 years, answered at least to the three appointments recommended for a period of 6 months for the Supportive periodontal therapy (SPT) and who were available to undergo an interview on the basis of free consent were included. The convenience sampling technique was used. Univariate analyses were performed on socio-demographic, clinical, therapeutic and post-therapeutic variables in order to obtain descriptive statistics. Results: Of 97 periodontal patients, 58.8% were female versus 41.2% male. The most representative age group was 18 to 30 years old (40.2%), 80.4% were incomplete adherents versus 19.6%, almost all periodontal patients were partial third party payers (85.6%); the preponderant reason for visit was pain (55.7%); most periodontal patients had benefited from motivation to oral hygiene, scaling and root planing (60.8%) The most common reason for non-return given by incompletely adherent periodontal patients was the disappearance of the main complaint. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for normality of the quantitative variable at the 0.05 probability level revealed that the distribution was not normal. Conclusion and Suggestions: Incomplete adherence of periodontal patients to SPT at CUK was high. Special attention to the development of a therapeutic follow-up protocol deserves to be implemented.