Periodontal status and provision of periodontal services in Malaysia: are we meeting population needs?

Methods A retrospective approach to analysis of secondary data was employed. Data for population treatment needs were extracted from three decennial national oral health surveys for adults (1990, 2000 and 2010). Annual reports from the dental subsystem of the government Health Information Management System (HIMS) provided information on oral health care delivery for years 2006-2010. These reports were a summary of aggregated data and did not allow for further analysis other than reporting absolute numbers and frequency distributions.