Perbedaan Pengalaman Karies Anak Tunanetra di Yapentra dan Anak Normal di Yayasan Anastasia Deli Serdang

Abstract

Dental and oral health is one of the most important things for children's growth and has a major impact on children's health and quality of life, especially for children with special needs. Blind children are children with special needs, and they have a high risk for dental and oral hygiene. Blind children cannot see how the plaque conditions on their teeth's surface could result in inadequate oral hygiene care, thus they have a higher increase in dental caries than normal children. The research was carried out in Deli Serdang, one of the districts that have a special foundation for blind children in North Sumatra. The purpose of this study is to determine whether there are differences in dental caries experiences between blind and normal children in Deli Serdang based on deft and DMFT index, with normal children's samples taken from Anastasia Foundation and blind children's samples taken from YAPENTRA, as both foundations have similar backgrounds. The research used an analytical method with a cross-sectional design to find whether there are differences in the experience of dental caries among blind and normal children. The research uses a purposive sampling technique with a sample of 82 children that consists of 41 blind children and 41 normal children. These samples were divided into two assessment groups: dental caries in mixed dentition period and dental caries in permanent dentition period. Data used were processed univariately and bivariately. Since the data used were not normally distributed, this study also uses nonparametric tests, namely Mann-Whitney and Kruskal Wallis. v Results of this study showed a significant difference in dental caries experience between blind children and normal children in permanent dentition period with p-value = 0.029 (p > 0.05). Dental caries experience between blind children and normal children in mixed dentition period was statistically insignificant with p-value = 0.457 (p>0.05) for the deft index and p-value = 0.846 (p > 0.05) for the DMFT index. This study found that dental caries experience in blind children and normal children in Deli Serdang is still in the low to medium category. To maintain children's dental and oral health, caries prevention programs must be carried out to achieve caries-free children in Deli Serdang. This study is limited by the lack of age distribution in the sample used due to insufficient data on the sample of blind children, since the research only uses samples from blind children foundations in Deli Serdang. This study suggests further research to be carried out with a larger number of samples.