Improvement of Oral Cleansing in Primary Schoolchildren

Abstract

The effectiveness of trained primary school classroom teachers to examine oral hygiene of the schoolchildren was compared with the dentist’s standard of detecting the urgent dental conditions, gingivitis and carious permanentlteeth. The study included 13 classroom teachers examining 540 schoolchildren during 3 months period in a primary school.

The study was also planned to evaluate the improvement of oral cleansing of the schoolchildren after using the disclosing agent by comparing the average plaque index scores and the average gingival index scores between two groups of the schoolchildren after 3 months period of tooth brushing after lunch with and without using disclosing agent.

There are statistically significant errors in detecting abnormal oral hygiene by the teachers and statistical improvement in oral cleansing among the group using disclosing agent.