1M.D.S (III year),
2Associate Professor,
3Senior Lecturer,
4M.D.S (II year),
*Corresponding Author: Bhawana Chauhan, M.D.S (III year),
Comparing oral health status between different groups of special care children would help in obtaining baseline data to assess their oral health needs to recommend appropriate preventive measures thereby justifying the need for this study.
The aim of this study was to compare the oral hygiene status and dental caries experience among visually and hearing impaired children.
A total of 600 children were taken as sample size and divided into three groups of 200 each comprising of DMFT indices were used to record the oral hygiene status and dental caries experience of both the groups respectively. The data thus recorded was sent for statistical analysis.
Mean OHI-S score for hearing impaired was 2.05 ± 0.97 while it was 2.59 ± 1.02 for visually impaired children. The caries prevalence was found to be more in the visually as compared to the hearing impaired subjects. The difference was observed to be statistically significant in both variables between the two groups whereas the difference between the above mentioned groups and the control group were found to be significantly higher.
Oral hygiene status and caries experience of hearing impaired children was significantly better than visually impaired and the difference was found to be statistically significant.
Visually impaired, Hearing impaired, OHI-S