The Burden of Recurrent Aphthous Stomatitis in Patients Attending a Tertiary Hospital in South-East Nigeria.

Abstract

Background: Recurrent Aphthous stomatitis (RAS) is one the most common oral mucosa diseases worldwide, however, there is scant literature describing the burden of this condition in Nigerian populations.

Objective: To assess the prevalence, age, and sex distribution of the various subtypes of RAS among patients accessing dental care in Alex Ekwueme Federal University Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, Nigeria.

Methods: A retrospective study was carried out among patients attending the Dental clinic of the Alex Ekwueme Federal University Teaching Hospital from January 2022 to September 2023. The primary source of data was the case notes of all the patients who attended the clinic during the study period. Data from patients with recurrent aphthous ulcers was collected and analyzed with IBM SPSS version 25.0 software. The association between age and gender distribution among patients was analyzed using the Chi-squared test. The level of significance was set at P < 0.05.

Results: The prevalence rate of RAS was 8.8% comprising 198 cases of which 144 (72.7%) were females and 54 (27.3%) were males. The mean age of the RAS patients was 31.5±2.32 years; the majority [112 (56.6%)] were in the age bracket of 21 – 30 years old. A total of 165 (85.4%) cases were of the Minor subtype; 21 (10.6%) had the Major subtype while 12 (6.0%) were of the Herpetiform subtype. The relationship between the age group and the subtype of RAS was found to be statistically significant (P=0.001), with the 21-30 age group having the highest proportion (n=101; 61.2%) of the Minor RAS subtype.

Conclusion: There is a significant health burden of RAS in South-eastern Nigeria, with an overall prevalence of 8.8%. There is a preponderance of RAS amongst females in the third decade of life with the Minor subtype as the most common.