Background: Oral health plays a crucial role in general health, quality of life and well-being of pregnant women and their newborns. In Chile, pregnant women have dental care guaranteed by law. However, due to the lack of previous epidemiological studies on the benefits of this guarantee, it is necessary to describe this situation and evaluate the need to change the methods of providing dental services.
Objectives: The objective of this study was to describe the pattern of providing dental benefits resulting from the Explicit Health Guarantee - Integral Oral Health in Pregnant Women (GES-SOIE) program to pregnant women attending the Juan Soto Fernández Family Health Center, Concepción, Chile, in 2014-2015.
Material and methods: A cross-sectional study of the electronic dental records of patients admitted to GES-SOIE was conducted. The variables studied were sociodemographic data, dental chair hours, non-attendance, treatment completion, and the type of referral to secondary healthcare (SHC).
Results: Of 233 pregnant women, 65.2% were registered for non-attendance, 21.2% required referral to SHC and 76.4% completed their treatment. When performing logistic regression, it was found that for each non-attendance the chance of not completing the treatment increased 1.4 times.
Conclusions: The level of non-attendance and opting out of the treatment in pregnant women is high, which hinders the proper functioning and effectiveness of GES-SOIE.
Keywords: dental care; dental health services; pregnant women.