The characteristics of high caries risk group for 12-years children in Korea

Abstract

Copyright © 2013 by Journal of Korean Academy of Oral Health This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine the characteristics of the high caries risk group among 12-year-old children in Korea. Methods: Information on oral health status and interview data were collected from 6,253 children (3,309 male and 2,944 female children) aged 12 years who participated in the Korea National Oral Health Survey in 2010. The subjects were sorted according to the decayed missing filled tooth (DMFT) data. The highest one-third was selected as the significant caries (SiC) group (N=2,184), and the others were classified as the middle group (N=4,466) and the caries-free group (N=7,067). This study also used demographic variables such as gender and area of residence. The variables for the oral health behavior were the number of dental sealants on the first molar, self-perceived oral health, average frequency of tooth brushing per day, and the mean frequency of daily snack consumption. The variables for the oral health status were the mean number of DMFTs and the SiC index. The associations between the high caries risk group and the demographic and social variables, oral health status, and oral health-related consciousness and behavior were evaluated by logistic regression analysis. Results: A significant proportion of the high caries risk group participants had no dental sealant on the first molar (46.4%) and lived in rural areas (38.1%, P<0.05). The determinants of the high-risk group were whether the first molar was sealed (‘0’, OR=52.67) and the self-perceived oral health (‘fair’, OR=1.43, ‘poor’, OR=2.09). Conclusions: The characteristics of the high caries risk group among 12-year-old Korean children were the absence of dental sealant on the first molar, poor self-perceived oral health, gender, and region.