Oral Health of Mentally Challenged Individuals in Ahmedabad, India

Two hundred twenty mentally challenged individuals were assessed for their dental caries status, oral hygiene status and periodontal status by using DMFT Index, Simplified Oral Hygiene Index and WHO methodology 1997 respectively. 64% of the subjects have moderate level of mental retardation. 119 subjects had fair oral hygiene status. The oral hygiene conditions was getting worse as the age advances showing a highly significant difference statistically (p<0.001). The dental caries prevalence was very high with 96.4% with mean DMFT score of 6.11 ± 3.83. There was no significant difference as the age advances for the mean DMFT and mean number of sextants affected by periodontal disease. The overall prevalence of periodontal diseases was 96.53% and 88.1% as per highest Community Periodontal Index (CPI) score and highest Loss of Attachment (LOA) score respectively.The overall oral health status was very poor among the mentally challenged individuals, thus it becomes utmost important to provide preventive dental care and special health care needs to such individuals and also to motivate their parents and caregivers to maintain the oral health so that there will be an overall improvement.