Association between social deprivation and oral health: A systematic review

Social deprivation provides a useful means of generalizing the condition of those who cannot or do not enter into ordinary forms of family and other such social relationships. The aim of this review was to evaluate the association of social deprivation with oral health. Three electronic databases (Google Scholar, MEDLINE, and Cochrane Library) were systematically searched to identify relevant studies. All the papers in English language were included without keeping any restriction for the article publication date. Review papers and those papers those were not concerned with oral diseases/oral health were excluded. Among a total of 1880 papers, 14 effective studies fulfilled the selection criteria and there was no scope for performing a meta-analysis in this area due to heterogeneity in these studies. Socially deprived adults have more dental risk behaviors, greater prevalence of dental caries, periodontitis, traumatic dental injuries, higher rates of orofacial pain, and tooth loss along with reduced dental service utilization compared to more advantaged adults. Socially deprived adults tend to suffer from poor oral health compared to socially advantaged adults suggesting the role of social deprivation in oral health inequalities. The major limitation was that most of the studies are cross sectional in nature. The studies are done across the populations considering association between various oral health variables and social deprivation using different indices which makes comparison between these studies difficult, and the indices used measured deprivation in general overlooking the social aspects of deprivation. Thus, these studies confirm the association between oral health and social deprivation.