An Observational Study to Assess the Prevalence of Oral Mucositis and Its Management among Patients Receiving Chemotherapy in Selected Hospital, India

Abstract

Introduction: Cancer is a major public health problem worldwide and a healthy cell does not turn into a cancer cell overnight. Cancer cells exhibit dysplasia, hyperplasia, metaplasia, and pleomorphism. An observational study was conducted to assess the prevalence of oral mucositis and its management among patients receiving chemotherapy in selected hospitals, India

Objectives: To assess the prevalence of oral mucositis, to identify the management strategies of oral mucositis and to find the association between the prevalence of oral mucositis with selected demographic variables.

Methods: A total of 500 cancer patients receiving chemotherapy were selected by using the Non-Probability Purposive Sampling technique. The tools used for data collection had four (4) sections of demographic variables of the cancer patients receiving chemotherapy, clinical profile of the cancer patients receiving chemotherapy, management strategies of oral mucositis and WHO Oral Mucositis Assessment Scale.

Results: The findings showed that the prevalence of oral mucositis was seen more in Grade 1 (29.6%) of Oral Mucositis in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy, with no samples suffering from Grade 4 (0%) of Oral Mucositis. The management strategies were identified that majority of the patients were using Chlohexidine Mouthwash (40%) and there were some participants who were using home remedies like honey (10%) for the oral mucositis, some samples not using any remedies (26%) for oral mucositis.

Conclusions: There was also a significant association between the prevalence of oral mucositis with selected demographic variable except the education of the participant which was not significant. The study concluded that the prevalence of oral mucositis and its management varies from individual to individual.