28th Euro Dentistry Congress

Biography:

Dr.med.dent Tsengelsaikhan Nyamdorj is the Head of the Department of Graduate Studies, Graduate School of Mongolian National University of Medical Sciences. Her research areas are oral health, socioeconomic status and medical education. She is an editor of Mongolian language academic journal “Innovation Dentistry” since 2014.

Abstract:

Although inequalities in dental caries have been well-reported, there is only one Mongolian study on the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and caries experience, which was published ten years ago. This study aimed to determine the dental health status of Mongolian children living in urban and suburban areas of Ulaanbaatar city and examine its association with income and parental educational attainment. An oral examination was conducted by dentists and caries were measured as deft/DMFT indices. A questionnaire including demographic characteristics and socioeconomic status was completed by their parents or caregiver. Parental educational attainment and household income were used as the measures of SES. The relative index of inequality (RII) and slope index of inequality (SII) were employed to examine the association between SES on deft and DMFT after adjusting for covariates. Dental caries prevalence (those with deft/DMFT > 0) was 89.3% among the total number of participants. The mean deft/DMFT values for age groups 1–6, 7–12, and 13–18 were 5.83 (SD = 4.37, deft), 5.77 (SD = 3.31, deft/DMFT), and 3.59 (SD = 2.69, DMFT), respectively. Rather than residence area and parental educational attainment, significant caries experience inequality was observed in relation to income (RII 0.65 95%, CI 0.52 to 0.82, SII −2.30, 95% CI −4.16 to −0.45). A prevention strategy for lower socioeconomic groups and building integrated oral health surveillance to monitor epidemiological trends for further evaluation of its progress is necessary. Keywords: oral health inequality; caries prevalence; socioeconomic status; Mongolia