PURPOSE: Before the advent of antibiotics, upper respiratory infections were the most common, but now the prevalence of odontogenic infection is on the increase in spite of developments in medicine and improvements in dental care. So, the aim of this study is to analyze the maxillofacial spaces' infection, especially those with dental origin in diabetic patients, in comparison with non-diabetic patients.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: This was a 4 years retrospective study from June 2013 to December 2016. The authors analyzed 120 cases which were treated for oro-facial spaces infections. The cases were divided into two groups: diabetic (Group-A), which included 47 patients and non-diabetic (Group-B), which included 73 patients. We compared the patients’ demography, chief complaints, laboratory values (Wbcs, microbiology), sources of infection (odontogenic, non-odontogenic) and the types of space and treatments (tooth involved, surgical approaches, complications and duration of hospital stay). Statistical analyses in both groups were conducted utilizing Student’s t test, Chi square test, and ANOVA test utilizing SPSS (IBM SPSS statistics 21 version).
RESULTS: Among the study population, 55% were female and 45.0% were male. WBCs in diabetic patients at admission time were higher than in non-diabetic patients, which was significantly (p=0.041). The diabetic patients were admitted to hospital later than non-diabetic patients p=0.0001, with more multiple spaces infection. The diabetic patients underwent more surgeries (p=0.017) underwent hospitalization and had more complications. In this study, no patient died from both groups.
CONCLUSION: For good prognosis the tooth involved should be as soon as possible treated to minimize possibility of infection recurrent.
