Gender and Age Related Disparity in Oral Health Knowledge, Attitude and Practice Among Elderly Pensioners in Port Harcourt, Rivers State

There is an increased interest in looking at age and gender differences in health and disease, including oral health. The objective of this study was to determine the influence of age and gender on oral health knowledge, attitude and practice of pensioners in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. The research was analytic descriptive survey in design. A total of 543 old people were selected by systematic random sampling. Data was collected with a self-developed Oral Health Assessment Questionnaire (OHAQ) designed in four sections (A-D) and analyzed using SPSS version 20 (IBM SPSS Armonk, New York). Relationship between variables was established using independent t-test and ANOVA, and significance determined at 0.05 alpha level. A total of 543 pensioners were involved in the study, this consisted of 295 (54.3%) were males and 248 (45.7%) females. The age groups 60-64 years, 65-69 years and ≥70 years constituted 234 (43.1%), 206 (37.9%) and 103 (19.0%) of the respondents respectively. Thirty-seven percent, 34% and 41% of the respondents had good oral knowledge, positive attitude and good behavior respectively. The oral health knowledge, attitude, and behavior scores for females were 14.8, 30.2 and 10.8 respectively. These were significantly higher in females than in males. Oral health knowledge and behavior decreased significantly with increase in age, while there was a non-significant decrease of oral health attitude with increasing age. This study found that oral health knowledge, attitude and practice of the pensioners differ significantly with gender, as well as a significant decrease in oral health knowledge and practice with increasing age. The study recommends that promotion of oral health among the pensioners.