Factors affecting preventive dental treatment of adolescents in Korea

Abstract

We conducted a multilevel analysis to identify factors affecting adolescents’ preventive dental treatment experience in South Korea. We sampled 72,435 students who participated in the 9th Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey. The individual-level variables were divided into demographic factors, socioeconomic factors, oral health behavioral factors, and oral symptom experience factors. The regional-level variables included oral health resources, rate of students receiving oral health education at school by region, social deprivation index, and the number of private educational institutions. A higher rate of receiving oral health education in school by region was associated with increased fluoride application (1.04 times, p = 0.003). However, the number of private educational institutes per 1000 people was negatively associated with fluoride application experienced by students (0.64 times, p = 0.039). Students underwent more scaling when there were more dentists per 10,000 individuals (1.14 times, p = 0.008) and less scaling in areas with a higher social deprivation index (0.88 times, p = 0.024). To increase the access to preventive care for oral diseases among adolescents, a preventive system should be established in schools, and a primary dental care system should be established through the cooperation of the government, private dental clinics, and schools.