Prevalence of Dental Caries among Elementary School Girls in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: A Cross-sectional Survey

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Alshiha, Sattam A. Alwayli, Hessa M. Hattan, Mohammed A. Alfraih, Yazeed K. Alamri, Abdullah A. Aldossary, Mohammed S. Marya, C. M.
Copyright Year	2017
Abstract	Aim: To assess caries prevalence among 6to 9-year-old female children in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and compare between results based on nationality and age levels. Materials and methods: A total of 17,891 female students from 120 public female elementary schools in Riyadh city were examined according to the World Health Organization (WHO) diagnostic criteria. The decayed [dt], missing due to caries [mt], and filled [ft] primary teeth (dmft) index and its components were measured. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Student’s t-test, and Chi-squared test were used to determine the significance differences, at α = 0.05. Results: The overall mean [dt] for all children was 3.89 [standard deviation (SD) 3.38], which increased to 5.0 (SD 3.02) when excluding children without active caries. The mean dmft was 5.69 (SD 4.0). However, excluding children with dmft = 0, the mean dmft was raised to 6.41 (SD 3.65). The caries prevalence was 88.82%. The non-Saudi children showed slightly higher values compared with Saudi children. However, statistically, there were only significant differences in values of [dt] mean, dt = 0, and [ft] mean (p < 0.05). The dmft index was higher for 7to 8-year-old group (5.81, SD 3.98) followed by the 8to 9-year-old group (5.79, SD 3.79) and the 6to 7-yearold group (5.47, SD 4.18). However, there were no statistically significant differences (p > 0.05) between 7to 8-year-old and 8to 9-year-old children. The 6to 7-year-old children were statistically different from the 7to 8 and 8to 9-year-old children. Conclusion: The dental caries prevalence among the study population was high, with the majority of children having untreated caries. This highlights the need for initiating deliberate community-based preventive measures for improvement in public health education and services provided.
Starting Page	29
Ending Page	33
Page Count	5
File Format	PDF HTM / HTML
DOI	10.5005/jp-journals-10062-0007
Volume Number	11
Alternate Webpage(s)	http://www.jaypeejournals.com/eJournals/ShowText.aspx?ID=12282&IID=957&IN=~/eJournals/images/JPLOGO.gif&TYP=TOP&Type=FREE&isPDF=YES
Alternate Webpage(s)	https://doi.org/10.5005/jp-journals-10062-0007
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article