Prevalence of caries in rural area children

A total of 657 school going children consisting of 397 boys and 260 girls in the age group ranging from 3-12 years were surveyed from rural areas of Lucknow, to determine the prevalence of dental caries and observe the effect of various oral cleaning habits.The present study showed 60.4% prevalence of caries in rural area children. Girls were found to have greater caries (68.1%) than boys (55.4%). The caries rate was fairly high (63.9%) in the mixed dentition period as compared to the deciduous dentition period (49.0%). The difference was highly significant (p<0.001).The caries rate was highest (67.0%) in those children who were not cleaning their teeth followed by finger users (63.2%) and Datun users (58.1%).Brush users showed the lowest caries rate (42.2%) as compared to non-brush users (61.8%), the difference being significant (p<0.01)