Dental Procedures in Primary Health Care of the Brazilian National Health System

The aim of this study was to examine the procedures of primary dental health care performed by oral health teams (OHTs) adhering to the second cycle of the 'National Programme for Improving Access and Quality of Primary Care' (PMAQ-AB) in Brazil. A cross-sectional descriptive analysis was performed, across 23 dental procedures comprising preventive, restorative/prosthetic, surgical, endodontic and oral cancer monitoring. Descriptive analysis shows that most of the oral health teams carry out basic dental procedures. However, most of the time, they do not keep adequate records of suspected cases of oral cancer, diagnosis tests or follow-ups, and do not perform dental prosthetic procedures. Data also showed disparities in the average number of procedures performed in each Brazilian geographical region in 2013-2014, ranging from 13.9 in the northern to 16.5 in the southern and south-eastern regions, reinforcing the great social disparities between them. Brazilian regions with the highest volume of dental needs deliver the lowest number of dental procedures. The need to expand the supply of prostheses and the early diagnosis of oral cancer in primary health care (PHC) is evident.