Socio-Demographic and Medical Characteristics of Patients With Odontogenic Infection Admitted to the Adult University Hospital in Puerto Rico: A Cross-sectional Study.

Objective: We aimed to estimate the overall distribution of odontogenic infection by socio-demographic and medical characteristics in patients admitted to the Adult University Hospital (AUH) in Puerto Rico (PR).

Methods: A cross-sectional study was undertaken with the medical charts of 129 patients (≥21 years) with odontogenic infection who had been admitted (2011-2015) to the AUH and treated by the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Post - graduate Program of the University of PR. The patients were selected from the hospital's billing database after having been identified using the International Classification of Diseases (9th and 10th revisions). The study variables included age, gender, municipality of residence, medical insurance, infection etiology, surgical and antibiotic treatments, length of stay (LOS), and the presence of diabetes. Descriptive and frequency statistics were calculated for all the variables; chi-squared, Kruskal-Wallis, Kendall tau, and Mann-Whitney tests were performed. A P < .05 was considered statistically significant.

Results: The mean age of the subjects was 40.36 (SD: 14.74) years, and they ranged in age from 21 to 81 years; the majority were enrolled in the public health insurance plan of PR. The leading cause of infection was dental caries. Diabetes was associated with longer LOSs; P < .01.

Conclusion: In our study, the relative frequency of admitted patients with an odontogenic infection, most of them with low income, increased over time with dental caries being the principal cause of infection.