Attributions to dental and diabetes health outcomes

Previous studies have proposed common psychological factors between oral he alth behavior and diabetes self-care. The aim here was to describe and anal yse more comprehensively the relationships between dental and diabetes heal th behavior on the basis of attribution theory. The likeness between subjec ts' own assessments, similarities of the causes given to success and failur e, and the predictive power of own dental assessments concerning the metabo lic balance of diabetes were studied. The research population was composed of 149 IDDM patients. Data were collected by means of a quantitative questi onnaire, a clinical oral examination and from patient records. It was found that from the patients reporting success with avoiding gingivitis 82% also reported success with metabolic status and they also had lower mean HbA1(c ) levels than patients assessing failure with gingivitis. There were some c orrelations between causes of failure: not bothering to clean approximal su rfaces correlated with non-adherence to diabetes treatment instructions, an d laziness as the cause of caries correlated with nonadherence to diabetes treatment instructions and with poor motivation for diabetes care. It can b e concluded that there are some common determinants for both dental health behavior and diabetes self-care. This connection should be taken into accou nt in health education by health care professionals.