Document Type

Article

Department

Community Health Sciences; Pathology and Laboratory Medicine; Surgery

Abstract

Objective:To determine the association between environmental tobacco smoke and dental caries.
Methods:This cross-sectional study was conducted in peri-urban and urban areas of Karachi, from February to August 2014, and comprised children aged 5-14 years. A pre-coded questionnaire for environmental tobacco smoke and food frequency questionnaire for dietary habits were used. Dental examination of children was done to detect caries. Cox-proportional hazard algorithm was used to measure the association of environmental tobacco smoke with dental caries at multivariable level. STATA version 12.0 was used for statistical analysis.
Result:Of the 500 children, 250(50%) each were from peri-urban and urban localities. The prevalence of dental caries was 336(67.2%).Family members of 154(30.8%) participants reported smoking. After adjusting for junk food intake, in-between meals, age, plaque index, dental visits and socio-economic status, the association between environmental tobacco smoke and dental caries remained statistically significant (p30 minutes of environmental tobacco smoke exposure, respectively.
Conclusions:Environmental tobacco smoke was found to be associated with dental caries.

Publication ( Name of Journal)

Journal of Pakistan Medical Association

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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