Ethnicity and Dental Neglect in a deprived area

Objective: To investigate the prevalence of dental neglect among adolescents from different ethnic groups living in East London.

Methods: This study used cross sectional data from Phase 3 Research with East London Adolescents; Community Health Survey (RELACHS, 2005) aged 15-16 years. This is a longitudinal secondary school based epidemiological study that followed up a representative sample of pupils across East London aged 11-12 years in 2001 (Phase 1) and aged 13-14 years in 2003 (Phase 2). The research was carried out in a classroom and involved dental clinical examinations and answers to questionnaires. Dental clinical examinations were conducted by two calibrated dentists following WHO criteria (1997). Questionnaires were completed in English individually by pupils. Ethnicity was assessed using an adaptation of the Census (2001) question; 11 groups were used in the analysis (White UK, White other, Mixed, Asian Indian, Asian Pakistani, Asian Bangladeshi, Asian British, Black African, Black Caribbean, Black British, Chinese/Vietnamese and other group). Adolescent dental neglect was defined as presence of untreated dental diseases/and or dental pain and not visited a dentist within the last year. Analysis included descriptive statistics. Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals were computed using simple logistic regression. The level of significance was set at 5%.

Results: Analysis included complete information on 848 pupils (58.02%). The highest prevalence of dental neglect was found in Black African (16.4%), Chinese/Vietnamese and other group (10%) and Asian Bangladeshi adolescents (9.5%). Participants coming from Mixed and Black Caribbean ethnic groups had the lowest prevalence of dental neglect (0%). Black African adolescents were 4.67 times more likely to be dentally neglected when compared with their White UK counterparts (P=0.001).

Conclusions: Ethnicity in the study was associated with the prevalence of adolescent dental neglect. Black African adolescents were more likely to be dentally neglected than the White UK participants.