The Journal
and thus, is coming into focus of the mankind. [2]
The caries experience varies greatly among
countries and even within small regions of
countries. It varies with age, and sex,
socioeconomic conditions, ethnicity, diet,
medical conditions of the patient, oral hygiene
practices, etc., and even within oral cavity all the
teeth and surfaces are not equally susceptible
to caries. [3] It not only causes pain and
discomfort, but also in addition, leads to a
financial burden. The prevention of dental
caries has long been considered as an
important task for the health professionals.
Selection of schools from each zone had been
done using simple random sampling method . A
proforma was used to assess dental caries in
the school children of jalandhar city that
included information related to gender, age and
brushing frequency. Clinical examinations
included dental caries examination using WHO
standard criteria as mentioned in WHO Oral
Health Proforma, 1997 [11] and Significant Caries
Index (SiC) was also used to assess the
[12]
prevalence of dental caries. The inclusion and
exclusion criteria were as follows.
Inclusion criteria
Scientists are continuing their research in
identifying the best practices for diagnosis,
treatment, and prevention of dental caries.
Previous methods for the treatment of dental
caries in a surgical manner has being replaced
by newer strategies that emphasize disease
prevention and conservation of tooth
structure. [4] Voluminous literature exists on the
status of the dental caries in the Indian
population. It has been observed that in 1940
the prevalence of dental caries in India was
55.5%, and in 1960 it was reported to be 68%.
Overall the general impression is that dental
caries has increased in prevalence and severity
in urban and cosmopolitan population since last
two decades. [4,5,6] In the past decade, a
substantial decline in dental caries has
occurred among children of several developed
countries mainly USA and several European
[7,8]
countries. Fluoride has been recognized as
one of the most influential factor responsible for
the observed decline of caries among children
as well as adults of these countries.
• School children aged 10-13 years
Exclusion criteria
• Individuals suffering from systemic illness
• Individuals with orthodontic brackets and with
severe extrinsic stains on their teeth.
The mean and standard deviation of scores
were calculated, comparison between
government and private school children was
done using Chi-square test, P ≤ 0.05 was
considered as statistically significant.
Results
A cross-sectional study was carried out in
Jalandhar city to assess the prevalence of
dental caries among school children in the age
group of 10-13 years. The distribution of study
population according to gender, age, brushing
frequency and Significant Caries index are
given in Tables. Table 1 to 4
Materials and Methods
A total of 1400 school children were examined
(700 governments and 700 privates.) To obtain
the total sample size of 1400, 280 school
children from each of the five schools were
randomly selected out of which 140 school
children were from government schools and
140 were from private schools.
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Vol. 13
12 No. 2
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May-August
Sept-Dec 2016
May-August
2016
2017