Evaluation of School Oral Health Preventive Program on Adjunct Mobile Dental Service for Schoolchildren in the South of Thailand

The objective of this study was to compare ability to avert caries problems in Thai schoolchildren from school oral health preventive program with and without mobile dental services. Dental survey in primary schools in Songkhla served by different access of dental services was performed based on WHO basic oral health survey methods. Multistage cluster sampling was done and got sample size of 711 children. Descriptive statistics and clustered logistic regression, which adjusted with design effect, was used. Two outcomes of school oral health preventive program were analyzed. The success of the program was measured as percentage of sound teeth (ST) among all permanent teeth (T). The failure of the program was the number of caries experienced teeth (DMFT). The respective percentages of the outcomes were 94.8 and 5.2 of the teeth in the children served by hospital-based services, and 93.9 and 6.1 in the combination of hospital and school-based service. From clustered logistic regression modeling, there was no significant difference of outcome between two access groups. In conclusion, adjunct mobile dental service did not improve effect of school oral health preventive program.