Abstract

FERREIRA, Aurigena Antunes Araújo; PIUVEZAM, Grasiela; WERNER, Carlos Wagner de Araújo  and  ALVES, Maria do Socorro Costa Feitosa. The toothache and toothloss: social representation of oral care. Ciênc. saúde coletiva [online]. 2006, vol.11, n.1, pp. 211-218. ISSN 1413-8123.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S1413-81232006000100030.

The objective of this study was identify the social representations of the oral care on daily activities to understand how the common sense works with the oral health, we realized the research with Brazilian northeast people. Thirty residents of Cidade da Esperança District, Natal, RN, Brazil were analyzed. The data was obtained from a semi-structured interview. The interviews were analyzed by Technique of Content Analysis (Bardin¹) as well as by Alceste 4.5 software. The categories were Toothache and Tooth Loss. The Toothache shows how the public health service is restrict. The Tooth Loss shows how the dentistry practice resolved the toothache, and how the prosthetics is limited by the social condition. The Social Representations of the oral care on daily activities show the negative consequences of the dentistry practice and the necessity of the new paradigm to the organization of the public health service taking into consideration the common sense about the oral care on daily activities.

Keywords : Social Representation; Oral health; Tooth loss; Toothache.