Correlation between periodontal procedures and aggregate variables of Brazilian States from 2018 to 2023

To investigate the correlations between the percentage of supragingival scaling, planing, and polishing (SSPP) and subgingival scaling and root planing (SRP) by generalist dentists (GD) and periodontists with the aggregate variables of Brazilian Federal Units (FU). This study used aggregated data extracted from the Unified Health System (UHS) and Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. Outcome variables included the total and the percentages of SSPP and SRP procedures of all FU, during 2018-2019, 2020-2021, and 2022-2023. The independent variables collected were: total population number, proportion of white individuals, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Human Development Index (HDI), coverage of oral health teams in Primary Health Care (PHC), number of Basic Health Units (BHU), Dental Specialist Centers (DSC), and investments made in PHC. Correlation coefficients were estimated between the percentage of procedures and independent variables. A multilevel Poisson regression model verified differences in the total number of periodontal procedures. In total, 42,312,458 SSPP and 29,850,275 SRP procedures were performed between 2018 and 2023. The total number of periodontal procedures decreased significantly during the period of 2020-2021, compared to 2018-2019 (count ratio [CR] = 0.38; 95% confidence interval [95%CI] = 0.31-0.47). Numbers of DSCs were correlated with an increase in the percentage of SSPP (R = 0.571, R = 0.422, R = 0.585) and SRP (R = 0.539, R = 0.540, R = 0.484) across all periods when performed by periodontists. However, greater investments in PHC were correlated with higher percentages of procedures performed by GD.