Objective: Characterize preventive oral behavior, attitudes, and perceptions, and the oral health stateof a group of diabetic patients in comparison with a control group. Materials and method: A cross-sectional study of a population of 146 patients in each group. A questionnaire based on Moore et al. was applied to determine oral health behavior. Attitudes taken into consideration were: personal oral health perception, * Odontologa, Especialista en Investigacion y Docencia Universitaria y en Gerencia en Servicios de Salud. Universidad Autonoma de Manizales. Manizales, Colombia. E-mail: sonrie@autonoma.edu.co ** Odontologa, Especialista en Investigacion y Docencia Universitaria y en Auditoria en Salud. Universidad Autonoma de Manizales. Manizales, Colombia. E-mail: ldjoya@autonoma.edu.co 14 Olga Patricia Lopez Soto, Luz Dary Joya Rodriguez Corah anxiety scale and reasons for not visiting the dentist. The oral health state was determined by means of epidemiological plaque and gingival index, and the DMF index [decayed (D), missing (M) and filled (F) teeth]. Results: The average of glycemia found in the diabetic group was 192 mg/dl. There was a lower proportion of diabetic patients who visited the dentist for control and prophylaxis (p<0.05). 39.7% of diabetics commented that their dentist did not know about their diabetes. The averages of dental plaque index and gingival index were higher in the diabetic group (p<0.05), similar to those averages of DMF index (p<0.05). Conclusions: Preventive oral behavior, attitudes and perceptions and the oral health state in diabetic patients were different compared to the control group, some of them statistically significant.