Abstract
Dental caries has a multifactorial etiology, including socio-economic variables and access to dental care, which were discussed in the national survey conducted in 2002. The aim of this study was to investigate the socio-economic aspects and access to dental care, associated with caries prevalence and severity in adolescents from the State of São Paulo. The study design was cross-sectional, on which data on 1,825 adolescents aged 15 to 19 years achieved from the data of an epidemiological survey conducted in the State of São Paulo in 2002 were analyzed. Epidemiological exams and interviews with previously formulated questions were used in the survey. The Significant Caries Index (SiC Index) was utilized to determine the group with higher caries experience. Frequency distribution and chi-square association tests were carried out in order to evaluate the relationship between independent variables and the dependent variable (DMFT). Confidence intervals and odds ratio (OR) were estimated. The risk factors pointed as indicators of presence of dental caries were as follows: not being a student, studying at public schools, family income lower than 5 Brazilian minimum wages. Moreover, not having an own house or a car seemed to contribute to caries experience. With regard to the access to public dental care, the adolescents assisted at public centers and looking for emergency dental care had the higher caries experience. Thus, the results showed that social deprivation is associated with caries experience in adolescents from the State of São Paulo.
Highlights
It has been observed that small population groups keep a high prevalence of dental caries, and some authors discuss the vulnerability to the disease, which may be related to a more intense exposure to the risk factors and to social deprivation[11]
The chi-square association test demonstrated that the variables “student”, “type of school”, “family income”, “has been to the dentist “, “last visit to the dentist”, “type of care” and “reason for going to dentist” were statistically significant in relation to the presence or not of dental caries
The chi-square association test revealed that the variables “student”, “type of school “, “house”, “family income”, “car”, “has been to the dentist”, “last visit to the dentist”, “type of care” and “reason for going to dentist” were statistically significant in relation to the high severity of dental caries
Summary
Even though dental caries is the most widely investigated disease in the world, most studies address schoolchildren, with a lack of studies on the caries status of young adults[20]. In addition to the difficult access to dental care, people with remarkable differences in income are in disadvantage as to the occurrence of oral health problems. Such finding was recorded in the survey conducted by the Ministry of Health in 1986, which indicated that people of high socio-economic background presented lower caries prevalence than people of low socio-economic status[17]
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