10.25241/stomaeduj.2020.7(1).art.1 -abstract

COMMUNITY DENTISTRY

Effectiveness of school-based fluoride mouth rinsing program in schoolchildren from Kandy District, Sri Lanka

DOI: https://doi.org/10.25241/stomaeduj.2020.7(1).art.1

Abstract
Introduction Dental caries is still epidemic and a significant public health problem in developing countries. No research on a fluoride mouth rinsing program has been conducted in Sri Lanka yet. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a supervised school-based 0.2% sodium fluoride mouth rinsing program among 6 year-old Sri Lanka school children.
Material and Methods This study was conducted on 415 school children from the Yatinuwara educational zone of the Kandy district, Sri Lanka from January 2011 to January 2014. The children were allocated into two groups by adjusting their socio-demographic background and the fluoride level in drinking water at school level; Group 1 received 0.2% sodium fluoride mouth rinses weekly, and Group 2 was the control group. A clinical oral examination and oral health education were performed at baseline and annual follow-ups.
Results At the baseline, the mean age of school children in the intervention group and the control group were 6.17 ± 0.41 years and 6.08 ± 0.50 years, respectively. Almost all of the children (>90%) used fluoride toothpaste in both groups. After the fluoride mouth rinsing program, the intervention group (77.8%) showed higher caries free proportion than the control group (63.1%), although no statistically significant difference occurred. The mean DMFT and DMFS indices in the intervention group were significantly lower than those in the control group.
Conclusion The school-based fluoride mouth rinsing program indicated a significant tendency of preventing future caries incidence among children with permanent dentition.
Keywords
Fluoride Mouth Rinsing; Dental Caries; 6 Year-Old; Schoolchildren; Sri Lanka.

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The Stomatology Edu Journal (Stoma Edu J) is one of the first Green Open Access journals in the field of dental medicine, publishing well-established authors, but equally committed to encouraging early career researchers and professionals alike to publish their work after a non-partisan, objective, double-blind rigorous peer-reviewed process. The Stomatology Edu Journal (Stoma Edu J) is a Green Open Access journal accessible for free on the Internet, hence no processing, peer review fees or article publishing charges payable by the author are required. A Green Open Access (GOA) journal means that all content is freely available to the user or his/her institution without charge. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. Our aim is to publish in the shortest possible time frame and ensure the rapid dissemination of your work via our journal page, but also through our indexing partners…(read more)

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STOMATOLOGY EDU JOURNAL (Stoma Edu J) is a new international dental journal whose main purpose is to inform researchers, educators, graduates, postgraduates and practitioners about the latest trends in the field, which followed, would bring immediate and lasting benefits to the patients; and about opinions of the most authorized specialists on what is best in current practice, for the good of both, patient and dentist.
STOMATOLOGY EDU JOURNAL (Stoma Edu J) is a peer-reviewed, open access international dental journal to be database indexed, meant to contribute to the development and completion of the medical training of practitioners as Dr. Greene Vardiman Black stated: “the professional man has no right to be other than a continual student”.
Open access journal, means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.