일부 초등학생의 식이행태와 우식경험도의 관련성

Objectives. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between school children`s diet behavior and dental caries experience in an effort to lay the foundation for the development of student oral health promotion projects. Methods. The subjects in this study were 477 students at J elementary school located in Kimje city, Jeonlabukdo, Republic of Korea. Their dental caries experience, dietary habit and obesity level were investigated. A dental checkup was conducted by a dentist in compliance with the WHO criteria, and a self-administered survey was carried out to find out their dietary habit. As for the level of obesity, their height and weight were measured by automatic devices to figure out Rohrer, Broca and Kaup indexes. The collected data were analyzed by Speaman`s rank-order correlation analysis to look for connections between diet behavior and dental caries experience, and whether there were any gaps in their collective averages was checked as well. Results. The school children were different in dental caries experience according to daily habits of having a snack. Those who ate between meals often had a higher mean of caries teeth (DdFfMt index) than the others who scarcely did that. A habit of self-cleansing food intake made a difference to their dental caries experience. Those who rarely ate fruit had a higher dft index than the others who did that (once, twice or more a week). The children who disliked vegetables and greens had a higher dft index than the others who liked. As for a question whether they ever refrained themselves from eating something they wanted to eat due to the possibility of dental caries, 55.4 percent said yes. In regard to the criteria of snack choice, 8.9 percent gave top priority to whether to cause dental caries or not. There was no link between the level of obesity and DMFT index, and dft index had a negative correlation to Rohrer index. The obesity level was correlated to subjective oral health. A higher Kaup index, namely a higher level of obesity, lead to a more negative subjective oral health. Conclusions. The findings of the study lend credibility to existing theories that the habit of carcinogenic food intake increases the degree of dental caries experience, and that the habit of self-cleansing food intake curtails it. There was no marked relationship between obesity and dental caries experience in this study.