Effectiveness of Dental Pit and Fissure Sealant Program by Dental Nurses in Subdistrict Health Promoting Hospital, Loei Province - ประสิทธิผลในการเคลือบหลุมร่องฟัน โดยทันตาภิบาลในโรงพยาบาลส่งเสริมสุขภาพตำบล จังหวัดเลย

Abstract

         The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of dental pit and fissure sealant of first permanent molars operated by dental nurses in subdistrict health promoting hospital in preventing caries by evaluation of the retention rate and to compare caries incidence of sealed and unsealed first permanent molar after a period of 24 months. The study was conducted in Loei province, Northeastern Thailand. Altogether 1,052 of 1,367 grade 1 students in 2011 academic year who received pit and fissure sealant on their first permanent molars were examined to detect retention rate of sealant and carious status. There were 2,934 sealed teeth with 77.0% coverage, 2.8 sealed teeth per person. 67.1% of sealants were completely retained, 19.8% were partially retained and 13.1% were missing. There were no caries found
in the teeth with complete retention of sealant, but in the teeth with partially retained and missing of sealant were 13.4% caries incidence. Chi-square and odds ratio were used to analyze the data. It was found that the percentage of dental caries in sealed teeth was lower than unsealed teeth significantly (p<0.05). The study revealed positive relationship between the amount sealed teeth by each dental nurse and the caries incidence (p<0.05). Therefore, the sealant program has been found to be effective in reducing the incidents of dental caries in primary school students.

Key words: pit and fissure sealant, first permanent molar, caries incidence, retention rate