Dental Caries Status and Oral Health Practice of Grade Six Primary School Students at Samrong District, Ubon Ratchathani Province

Abstract

The dental caries is an important problem for dental health in Thailand, especially in school ages. They face impacts of life activities. To understand their dental health problem, the cross sectional study was conducted to gain information of school age’s dental health problem and promote them to prevent the problem. The objectives of this study were to study the dental caries status, oral health practices and associations between oral health practices, and dental caries status of grade six primary school students in Samrong district, Ubon Ratchathani Province. Samples were 236 students providing a complete response for analysis. The instruments for collecting data included the oral health practices questionnaire and the dental status form. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, Chi-square test, and binary logistic regression. The results found that 76.3% of samples a had experience of dental caries in their permanent teeth. Mean of decayed, missing, and filled teeth index (DMFT) of the samples was 3.4 teeth per person. About 76.3% of samples brushed their teeth twice or more daily, 54.2% of them brushed their teeth before going to bed, and 49.6% of them did not brush their teeth after lunch. Twenty seven percentage of samples had snacks and sweets every day and 26.2% of samples took sugary drinks and fizzy drinks every day. Samples who brushed their teeth once daily had 2.6 times more likely to develop their dental caries compared to samples who brushed twice or more daily (OR = 2.6, 95% CI = 1.1-6.2). They brushed their teeth sometimes before going to bed had 2.4 times more likely to develop their dental caries compared to students who brushed their teeth every day (OR = 2.4, 95% CI = 1.2-4.5). The samples who had snacks and sweets every day had 2.3 times more likely to develop their dental caries compared to students who had snacks and sweets sometimes or never (OR = 2.3, 95% CI = 1.1-5.0). The samples taking sugary drinks and fizzy drinks every day had 3.8 times more likely to develop their dental caries, comparing to children who took sugary drinks and fizzy drinks sometimes or never (OR = 3.8, 95% CI = 1.5-9.3). It is recommended that the dental public health practitioners here should consider the effect of oral health practices on dental caries status in order to design the future dental health promotion interventions.