The Relationship of Malocclusion with Periodontal Status, Dental Caries, and Sociodemographic Factors in School Children of Ludhiana

Abstract

Aim: The aim of this study was to find the relationship of orthodontic malocclusion with periodontal status, dental caries, and sociodemographic factors. Materials and Methods: The study population comprised 400 school-going children of age 11–14 years. The severity of malocclusion was determined by Treatment Priority Index. The sociodemographic factors were evaluated using a questionnaire that enquired about age, gender, parents' monthly income, and their educational status. Periodontal status was assessed using Community Periodontal Index of Treatment Need (CPITN) index. To know about dental caries, decayed, missing, filled teeth (DMFT) index was used in this study. Statistical Analysis Used: Spearman's rank correlation coefficients were used to find an association between variables. The effect of sociodemographic factors on treatment priority index (TPI) scores was examined using Chi-square test. Student's t-test (to compare TPI scores of different genders) and analysis of variance (to compare TPI scores among different age groups) were used in this study. Results: Out of a total of 400 children included in the study, 19.5% students had normal occlusion whereas a majority of them (80.5%) showed some sort of malocclusion. CPITN scores revealed that 3.1% pupils had no sign of the disease, 57.5% showed gingival bleeding after gentle probing, and 39.4% had supra or subgingival calculus. Conclusions: No statistically significant correlation was found between the orthodontic treatment need, periodontal status, and sociodemographic factors while a significant relation is observed of TPI with DMFT.