Are Oral Health Conditions Associated with Schoolchildren’s Performance and School Attendance?

Abstract

Aim:To examine the relationship between children's oral health-related quality of life and their academic achievement and school attendance.Materials and Methods:Data was gathered from the answers to a structured questionnaire from 150 children aged 7-12 years. Their demographic data, the children’s/parents’ oral health conditions, their academic performance/school absenteeism, and their intraoral examination outcomes were recorded via a structured questionnaire. The Silness & Löe plaque index was used to assess their dental plaque scores and DMFT/DMFS, dmft/dmfs indices according to the WHO criteria were used to determine their dental caries scores.Results:The mean age of the 150 pediatric patients [72 girls (48%) and 78 boys (52%)] was 9.23±1.44 years. Due to dental care-related issues, 82% of schoolchildren missed less than two weeks, and 18% missed more than two weeks of school. Furthermore, 21% of these missed days were related to toothache or infections, and 34% were due to going to dental treatment appointments. The association between nail biting and hard object biting and the school achievement of the children was shown to be statistically significant (p=0.02 and p=0.03, respectively). According to the results of the present study, it was determined that school absenteeism was higher in those children who needed dental treatment. It was also observed that there was a negative correlation between school absenteeism and academic success (p=0.01).Conclusion:Dental problems can cause school-aged children to be absent from school and affect their school performance negatively.

Keywords

• oral health-related quality of life
• school absenteeism
• school performance