Abstract

Objective: The study was planned to assess the prevalence of dental caries among orphans and parented children. Materials and Methods: A total of 62 Orphans and 60 school children were taken in the study. The age group of all the study subjects was from birth to 20 years. The clinical examination was done using the DMFT (Decayed + Missing + Filled Teeth) Index for assessing caries prevalence. The Statistical software namely SPSS 16.0, was used for the analysis of the data and significance level was fixed at P < 0.05. Results: This study revealed that 66.4% of primary teeth among orphans were decayed as compared to 27.9% in parented children whereas 57.2% permanent teeth were decayed among orphans as compared to 76.3% in school children. Prevalence of dental caries was found to be more in parented children with mean DMFT of 1.85± 2.177 as compared to orphans with mean DMFT of 1.61± 1.978. Conclusion: Overall the level of dental health was compromised in the study subjects. Further, children residing with their parents had more carious teeth as compared to orphans.

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