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LONDON, UK: Despite worldwide efforts to improve oral health, a new global study has found that 35 per cent of the world’s population currently suffer from untreated carious lesions in their permanent teeth. It also established that 621 million children worldwide have tooth decay that goes untreated.
To make things worse, hundreds of millions of new cases are expected to add to the burden of dental decay annually owing to neglected treatment, according to the new paper by researchers from the UK, the US and Australia published online in the Journal of Dental Research.
Even developed countries are affected, with one in three people in the UK suffering the consequences of neglected treatment, along with one in five in the US, for example.
The findings, which are part of the latest Global Burden of Disease study, involved a systematic review of all data on untreated dental decay, leading to a comprehensive report on rates of tooth decay for all countries and age groups and both sexes for 1990 and 2010. The team analysed 192 studies of 1.5 million children aged 1 to 14 years old, across 74 countries, and 186 studies of 3.2 million people aged 5 years or older, across 67 countries.
“We have seen a clear shift in the burden of tooth decay from children to adults. The current perception that low levels of decay in childhood will continue throughout life seems incorrect,” said lead author Prof. Wagner Marcenes from the Queen Mary University of London. “It is alarming to see prevention and treatment of tooth decay has been neglected at this level because if left untreated it can cause severe pain, mouth infection and it can negatively impact children’s growth.”
Marcenes explained that the study underscores the vital need to develop effective oral health promotion strategies.
“The fact that a preventable oral disease like tooth decay is the most prevalent of all diseases and injuries examined in our report is quite disturbing and should serve as a wake-up call to policymakers to increase their focus on the importance of dental health,” he continued. “Extending oral health promotion activities to the work environment is necessary to maintain good oral health to reduce the major biological, social and financial burden on individuals and healthcare systems.”
Tooth decay is the fourth most expensive chronic disease to treat, and studies have shown that if left untreated it can lead to poor productivity at work and absenteeism in adults and poor school attendance and performance in children.
