Performance of Primary Dental Care Services: An Ecological Study in a Large Brazilian City

Table 1

Indicators used for cluster formation, Belo Horizonte, 2010.

Indicators	Description
Access to individual dental care	Proportion of residents who receive a scheduled primary dental consultation with the aim of diagnosing and elaborating a preventive/therapeutic plan to address the detected needs, calculated as a percentage of the population registered by the Belo Horizonte Social Census.
Frequency of dental emergencies	The indicator was obtained by calculating the percentage of dental emergency consultations in primary health care (i.e., pulpal pain, acute periapical abscess, pericoronitis, periodontal abscess, dental trauma, etc.) relative to the total number of dental consultations in primary health care.
Proportion of individual preventive procedures	The indicator was obtained by calculating the percentage of preventive dental procedures (plaque control, fluoride treatment, sealants, dental scaling, patient counseling, and supervised individual brushing) relative to the total number of dental procedures in primary health care (preventive, restorative, and surgical procedures).