Impact of untreated dental caries and its clinical consequences on the oral health-related quality of life of schoolchildren aged 8-10 years

This study aims to evaluate the impact of untreated dental caries and its clinical consequences on the quality of life of Brazilian schoolchildren aged 8-10 years. A randomly selected sample of 587 children underwent a clinical oral examination for the assessment of untreated dental caries and clinical consequences. The WHO criteria (decayed component of the decayed, missing, and filled teeth-D-DMFT in permanent teeth or d-dfmt in primary teeth) and the PUFA index, which records the presence of severely decayed permanent (upper case) and primary (lower case) teeth with visible pulpal involvement (P/p), as well as ulceration caused by dislocated tooth fragments (U/u), fistula (F/f), and abscesses (A/a), were used for the oral examination. Oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) was evaluated using the Child's Perception Questionnaire (CPQ(8-10)). Poisson regression was employed to test unadjusted and adjusted associations between untreated dental caries/clinical consequences and OHRQoL. The prevalence of untreated dental caries was 64.6 % (D/d component of DMFT/dmft > 0) and 17.9 % of children exhibited clinical consequences of caries (PUFA/pufa index > 0). In the adjusted models, untreated caries was significantly associated with the total CPQ(8-10) score and all subscale scores. The clinical consequences of dental caries (PUFA/pufa index > 0) were significantly associated with the total CPQ(8-10) as well as the oral symptoms and functional limitations' subscales. Untreated dental caries and its clinical consequences exerted a negative impact on the OHRQoL of the schoolchildren analyzed.