Urban-rural differences in dental caries experience among 6-year-old children in the Russian north

Abstract

Introduction: Russians residing in rural areas, particularly in the north, have poorer health in general and lower life expectancy compared with urban residents. Little is known about dental health in the north of Russia, given that the last national oral health survey was performed more than 10 years ago. The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence and experience of dental caries among 6-year-old children in a remote region in Northwest Russia. Methods: In total, 532 children aged 6 years were recruited in 5 randomly selected rural and urban settings of the Arkhangelsk region. Girls comprised 50.8% of the sample. Caries experience was assessed at D3 (cavitation) level by a single calibrated examiner. The prevalence of caries was calculated as the number of children with at least one affected tooth (decayed or missing or filled) divided by the number of examined children x 100% with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Caries experience was estimated using a sum of decayed, missing, filled teeth (dmft index) and presented as means and 95% CIs. Dichotomous and continuous data were analysed using χ² and Mann-Whitney tests, respectively. Results: The prevalence of caries was 93.4% (95% CI: 90.9-95.2) with a mean dmft of 6.71 (95%CI: 6.37-7.04). On average, there were 5.48 (95% CI: 5.16-5.80) decayed, 0.44 (95% CI: 0.37-0.51) missing and 0.79 (95% CI: 0.67-0.91) filled teeth. Although the overall caries experience was similar in rural and in urban areas (6.52 vs 6.41, p=0.742), the number of decayed teeth in rural areas was greater (5.94 vs 4.91, p=0.001). Moreover, there were fewer missing teeth (0.31 vs 0.59, p<0.001) and filled teeth (0.45 vs 1.19, p<0.001) in rural areas. Boys had a greater number of affected teeth than girls (7.12 vs 6.32, p=0.023). Conclusions: The levels of both caries prevalence and caries experience in the region exceeded the Russian average and corresponding levels in most European countries. Both urban-rural and sex variations in caries experience and its components were © MA Gorbatova, LN Gorbatova, MU Pastbin, AM Grjibovski, 2012. A licence to publish this material has been given to James Cook University, http://www.rrh.org.au 2 observed. Urgent preventive dental public health measures on both population and individual levels are needed to improve the situation.

Prevalence of Dental Caries and Associated Factors Among Secondary School Students in Kigali, Rwanda: A Cross-sectional study

“…However, these ndings were higher than the prevalence done in Indore district, India (47.2%) [28]. On the other hand, this prevalence was lower when compared with other studies done in (85%) of Qatar, (74%) of Kazakhstan [8], Moldova (77.5%), Russia (77.5%) [29]; Tanzania (91.5%) [30], and in Tamil Nadu, India (89.3%) [31]. These differences might have been attributed to social economic differences, study setting, and oral health behavior among study participants.…”

36 Months’ Clinical Performance of Primary Incisors Restorations Depending on the Type of Restorative Technique Used: A Randomized Controlled Trial

“…According to recent studies, ECC prevalence in the world ranges from 25% to 90% [3], with a mean ECC prevalence of 23.8 percent in infants younger than 36 months and 57.3 percent in children aged 36 to 71 months, respectively [1,2]. ECC in developing countries was reported to be more than in developed countries, depending on the availability of universal health coverage, economics (e.g., gross national income values), and cultural traditions [1,2,[6][7][8][9][10][11]. While the prevalence of ECC is between 2 and 19 percent in most developed nations [1,7,8,11], it has been estimated to be as high as 58-90 percent in less developed countries and among disadvantaged populations in industrialized countries [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13].…”

“…The prevalence of ECC in Russia ranged from 83 to 93.4 percent, with mean DMFT values (decayed, missing, or filled teeth) of 3.0-6.71 [10,14,15]. At the same time, even in developed nations, ECC prevalence does not appear to be decreasing: in Germany, it exceeds 10% (up to 26% with early lesions) among 3-year-old children and escalates to almost 50% in 6-/7-year-old children [11,16,17].…”