Dental Caries Experience among Industrial Workers in Parwanoo, Himachal Pradesh, India

BACKGROUND: Dental caries, the oral disease with multifactorial causes is a major public health problem leading go medically significant morbidity and impacting the general health of a population directly or indirectly. Dental caries is known to affect people from every population. OBJECTIVE: To assess dental caries experience in permanent dentition among industrial workers in Parwanoo, Himachal Pradesh, India. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 1024 industrial workers of Parwanoo, Himachal Pradesh, in the age group of 16-55 years. Dental caries experience was assessed using WHO dentition status proforma (2013). Statistical analysis was done using SPSS 21.0. RESULTS: Out of 1024 study subjects, 572 were males and 452 were females. Caries prevalence was found to be 47.46%. Mean decay-missing-filled teeth score of the population was 0.95 ± 0.45 and was found to be higher among females (1.06 ± 0.42) as compared to males (0.93 ± 0.38). CONCLUSION: The prevalence of dental caries in industrial workers is noteworthy. Essential requisites to bring this under control include awareness regarding good dental health, education on prevention of dental caries and implication of necessary measures for the provision of adequate dental care.