Correlation between the Severity of Dental Caries and Nutritional Status of in-School-Age Children of SD Negeri Tidung Makassar

Abstract

Dental caries is a major problem of oral health and  a common chronic disease which happens in childhood. School age children are nation’s future generation and capital development. Therefore, the health condition of school-age children must be improved. One of the health effort is by improving nutrition in elementary school-age children. Nutritional status and nutrient intake are important for oral and dental health because nutrition such as vitamin A and D, calcium, phosphorus, fluoride have effects on morphology, composisiton and tooth eruption patterns. These factors will determine the susceptibility of teeth to dental caries.  The aim of this study was to determine correlation between the severity of dental caries and nutritional status of in-school-age children of SD Negeri Tidung. This study was a descriptive observational study with a cross-sectional design and involved 189 samples with a simple random sampling method. The severity of dental caries was measured by Decayed Missing Filling-Teeth index and nutritional status was measured using the anthropometric standard of Indonesian Ministry of Health. The result of this study is “normal” nutritional status has the highest percentage of 64% or as many as 121 samples. While the severity of dental caries “very severe” has the highest percentage of 24.3% or as many as 46 samples. From the results of statistical test using Sperman’s RHO test, shows that R-value was -0.074 and p-value was 0.312 which means that there was no significant correlation between dental caries severity and nutritional status in students of SD Negeri Tidung Makassar, both boys, girls, and overall students.