The Condition of Oral Health in Regular Users of Psychoactive Substances

Besides various harmful effects on the overall health, chronic consumption of psychoactive substances has different consequences on oral health. The goal of this paper was to examine the condition of oral health in psychoactive substance users during the healing process and to do a comparative analysis of maintaining oral hygiene before and during the substance abuse treatment.

The study included 26 regular users of psychoactive substance. All the respondents used different types of psychoactive substances for at least two years and were treated for three months. The examination was divided into two parts. The first included completing the questionnaires that contained questions related to maintaining oral hygiene while using psychoactive substances and during the substance abuse treatment (the moment of interviewing). The second included the clinical examination of the respondents during the therapy.

Taking into account all information collected from the questionnaires, respondents used heroin statistically significantly more than all the other substances (p < 0.001), while snorting was the most common way of consuming; this was statistically significantly more common than all the other ways, separately (p < 0.001). During therapy, a significantly greater number of the addicts used some aids for maintaining oral hygiene and the percentage of those users rose from 19.23% to 61.54% (p < 0.01). The clinical examination confirmed that the majority of the respondents had gingivitis, 23 (88.46%).

In the users of psychoactive substances, gingiva and other periodontal tissues suffer the worst damage, but when the healing process starts, the awareness about the importance of maintaining oral hygiene improves.