Sidra Mohiuddin, Nighat Nisar, Narendar Dawani.
Dental Caries Status among 6 and 12 Years Old School Children of Karachi City.
J Pak Dent Assoc Jan ;24(1):39-45.

OBJECTIVES: To assess dental caries status of school-children of 6-years and 12-years in public and private schools of Karachi city. METHODOLOGY: An analytical cross sectional study of 1600 school-children, from of 6 years and 12 years of age, were conducted among nine different towns of Karachi city. At the first stage, nine towns out of eighteen towns were selected randomly through cluster sampling. In the next stage, from each selected town one private and one public school were identified randomly. Selected sample of school-children were examined for assessment of dental caries by using WHO criteria of diagnosing dental caries. The data were entered and managed by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 17.Descriptive analysis of the data including frequencies, percentages and means of school-children’s decayed, missing and filled components was performed. Comparisons among dental caries status of private and public school-children were performed by using independent sample t test. Level of significance was kept at p=0.05. RESULTS:The overall prevalence of dental caries among the sample was more than half (n=1114, 69.6%) with a mean DMFT score of (2.98 +- 3.47) amongst which major contributor was decayed component which was found to be (2.56 +- 3.99).. Whereas, caries prevalence among deciduous dentition was three forth (n=664, 74.9%) with mean dmft score was (2.01 +- 3.30) and among permanent dentition prevalence was found to be more than half (n=450, 63%) with mean DMFT score of (0.97 +- 1.97). Moreover, gender wise mean DMFT among permanent and deciduous dentition was found to be statistically non significant (p>0.109), (p>0.461) respectively. Furthermore, statistically significant difference was found in dental caries among permanent dentition of private and public schoolchildren (p<0.001). CONCLUSION:This study suggests that considerable proportion of children (both among younger and older age categories) had dental caries with significantly more involvement among public school children belonging to eight different towns of Karachi city. KEY WORDS: Dental Caries, Private and Public school children, Oral Health Education, Oral Health Promotion.

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