[Dental Health of Children and Adolescents in the Rhine-Erft District attending Secondary General and Special Needs Schools: A 5-year comparison].

BACKGROUND: Nationally there is a lack of data on the prevalence and experience of caries among 10- to 14-year-old schoolchildren with increased caries risk, and in the second period of mixed dentition/early period of permanent dentition. AIM: To compare caries prevalence and experience and prevalence of fissure sealant (FV) among schoolchildren with disability attending special needs schools (FS) with children with lower level of educational attainment attending secondary general schools (HS). METHODS: Dental health of schoolchildren aged 10 to 14 years attending FS or HS was determined according to WHO standards in two study periods (UP1=school year 2010/2011; UP2=school year 2015/2016). Data were anonymized and analyzed with MS Excel 2019 and IBM SPSS Version 26. The study was approved by the ethics committee of the University of Witten/Herdecke (#119/2016). RESULTS: Data on 2539 schoolchildren were available for analysis. Prevalence of caries in schoolchildren attending HS (UP1=36.5%; UP2=32.7%) and FS (UP1=31.4%; UP2=33.3%) was very similar as also the corresponding mean DMFT values. There was a significant difference in caries prevalence between the 2 groups in UP1 and a significant decrease between UP1 and UP2 among schoolchildren attending HS. With respect to FV, 50.7% (UP1) and 50.9% (UP2) of schoolchildren attending HS and 36.3% (UP1) and 52.1% (UP2) of schoolchildren attending FS had at least one FV. Furthermore, caries experience and caries prevalence of schoolchildren with at least one FV of both school types was significantly lower compared to schoolchildren without FV. Mean DMFT values for schoolchildren attending HS were 0.53 (UP1, FV>0), 1.16 (UP1, FV=0), and 0.49 (UP2, FV>0), 0.99 (UP2, FV=0) with p<0.001 in each case. Mean DMFT values for schoolchildren attending FS were 0.56 (UP1, FV>0), 0.9 (UP1, FV=0) (p=0.01), and 0.51 (UP2, FV>0), 1.02 (UP2, FV=0) (p=0.003). CONCLUSIONS: Dental health of schoolchildren attending HS and FS in the REK is significantly poorer compared to the general population. This suggests that both these groups belong to population-subgroups with an increased risk of developing caries. In order to improve this situation, caries prevention measures should be implemented beyond primary school age in children attending these 2 types of school.