Comparison Between the Dmft and Dmfs Index Scores of Smokers and Nonsmokers Visiting out Patient Department of a Private Dental College

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Tobacco is detrimental to human health. According to The World Health Organization (WHO)  tobacco is responsible for more than 7 million deaths and hundreds of billions of dollars lost worldwide each year. Dental caries is the primary focus of dental health prevention as it is one of the most prevalent chronic diseases.

AIM: The current study is to compare the DMFT and DMFS scores among smokers and non smokers.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a comparative and descriptive study which was performed under a university setting in the year 2021. The data of patients who visited dental college from December 2020 to March 2021 was collected by reviewing patients records and analysing data. 100 patients who were smokers and 100 nonsmokers are considered in the study. The collected data was compiled , reviewed, tabulated and entered in SPSS software for running chi square test to find if the correlations were statistically significant (p<0.05).

RESULTS: The results of the study shows that most smokers have DMFT and DMFS scores of more than 20 and most non smokers had DMFT and DMFS scores of 0-10 (Figure 1 and 2). This was found to be statistically significant , p<0.000 (p<0.05).

CONCLUSION:  It is evident that smokers were found to have higher incidence and severity of caries than nonsmokers.