Introduction:

Dental care during pregnancy is an opportunity to promote health and prevent oral disease related to delivery complications.

Objective:

To describe the differences or similarities in the prevalence of caries, gingivitis and oral hygiene in pregnant and non-pregnant women in 13 municipalities of Valle del Cauca in Colombia between 2009 and 2011.

Materials and methods:

The database of the priority oral health project of Valle del Cauca 2009-2011, which had 2243 records of a random sample of users cared in dental services of the participating hospitals, was analyzed. The 22.4% of the records were in women in reproductive age and, from these, 17.3 % were pregnant at the time of the review. Indicators related with caries, gingivitis and plaque were measured, exploring the probability of occurrence with 95% confidence interval.

Results:

502 users of dental services were evaluated. The average age of pregnant women was 21.9 (5.3 standard deviation) and 27.6 (8.6 standard deviation) in non-pregnant. A higher prevalence of caries and gingivitis was found in pregnant women. There were no significant differences between the two groups in relation to the history of caries and the Decay-missing-filled index (DMF). Similarly, no significant differences were observed to acceptable dental plaque and good practices of oral hygiene. Pregnant women had greater knowledge about oral health.

Conclusions:

There are differences between pregnant and non-pregnant women in terms of age, gingivitis prevalence, percentage of bacterial plaque, DMF index, knowledge on oral health and consumption of food between meals.

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