Estudo clínico e radiológico das patologias dentárias e periodontais de felinos domésticos (Felis catus)

Abstract

Oral diseases, including the dentals one, severely affect domestic cats although still neglected. Many of the oral diseases as feline reabsorptive lesion do not have an etiology determined yet. Nevertheless, other oral diseases are not adequately prevented or treated, although having a physiopathogeny well determined. Moreover, they are not considered an important factor to the cat´s health, underestimaing pain, discomfort, secondary infections, dental and bone loss. The main objective of this project was to diagnose the most frequent dental disease in a feline only practice in Rio de Janeiro. All the cats had a criterious clinical evaluation based in pre determined patterns of odontologic analysis. In addition, all the cats had a radiologic evaluation of all dental elements. Among the animals observed, 88% presented some kind of dental change and a positive relation with the increase of the age was observed. Because of that, the incidence was higher in adult and old cats. The most common disease were periodontal disease (88% of the cases), absence of dental elements (54%), reabsorption lesion (40%), and dental fractures (26%). The statistic method applied to this project was SPSS (Statistic Package for Social Sciences-MicroSoftware 16.0) with evaluation of non parametric tests. The main conclusion of this study was that the incidence of dental diseases in domestic cats is high. Moreover, although more frequent in older cats, they are also common in young animals. In all groups, the severity of most of the identified diseases would indicate a prompt odontologic intervention.