Introduction:

Periodontal self perception allows the patient to assess his own oral health, as well as he becomes aware of the risks that it may trigger, motivating him to improve his life style, diminishing those risks with the planning of a preventive intervention.

Objective:

To calculate the prevalence of self-perceived periodontal disease in 12-year-old schoolchildren in the Monay parish of the 2016 Cuenca canton.

Materials and Methods:

The methodology applied was of qualitative type, descriptive design, retrospective cross-sectional observational technique. The sample consists of 252 epidemiological records of 12-year-old schoolchildren. The data were obtained from the database of the Catholic University of Cuenca, through the Epi Info program, which were analyzed by operators who received a previous calibration.

Results:

The results of the prevalence of automatic perception in the study parish, indicate that 63% perceive periodontal disease and 37% do not perceive it, according to sex, a higher prevalence of perception was obtained in women with 73% and in men 52%; According to the type of educational support, no significant differences were obtained between the percentages of schools that went to private or public schools, 56% of periodontal self-perception in private schools and 54% of periodontal self-perception in public schools were obtained.

Conclusions:

A result of 63% is reported, constituting a high prevalence of schoolchildren who perceive periodontal disease.