Oral health status of kindergarten children with special needs

Abstract

The purpose of this retrospective study is to find out in what extent disabilities may have an effect on the oral health, in contrast to healthy children between three to six years of age from. Leverkusen, Germany. Three children enter the treatment room at the same time, this procedure being the most efficient. The evaluation of the patients made use of the dmft-index according to its definition. The specific dmft value that was found, is represented in percentage compared to all the others. Out of the total of disabled children, 16 showed the dmft value of 0, compared to the 82 children without disabilities found with a dmft of 0 However, comparing those two values in percentage, it is clear that the overall expectancy is rather different, since 44.44% of all disabled children in this study were caries free, compared to 63.57% in the healthy group of children. Furthermore, it is evident that extreme values are more frequent to be found in the group among disabled children. The results of this study show, that the average tooth of a child with special needs affected by the dmft index was always higher than compared to healthy children.