SAUDIA ARABIA: A Pakistani researcher at College of Dentistry, University of Ha’il, Saudi Arabia, recently led the research along with his college and Pakistani colleagues in which the prevalence of dental caries was found out to be 60 per cent among the Pakistani population.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), dental caries has been a major problem for almost every country around the globe. Dental caries has been a multifactorial disease initiated by interactions between fermentable carbohydrates, acidogenic bacteria, and other host factors comprising saliva.
To conduct this research, Dr Ammar Ahmed Siddiqui and colleagues planned a meta-analysis to document the prevalence of dental caries in Pakistan. Almost thirty studies that showed the prevalence of dental caries among the Pakistani population was included in this review. The researchers conducted the quality assessment of all the included studies using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) critical appraisal checklist for prevalence studies. They analyse the data using MedCalc software.
The prevalence estimate of dental caries in Sindh was found out to be 58.946 per cent, and in Punjab, it was 55.445 per cent. While in Baluchistan and KPK combined showed 51.168 per cent caries prevalence.
The results concluded that nearly 60 per cent of the Pakistani population have dental caries while the proportion was almost the same in all provinces.
However, the purpose of this research was to be served as a baseline for making future health policies and health promotion activities in Pakistan.
Freah Alshammary, Mushir Mulla, Saad M. Al-Zubaidi, Eman Afroze, Junaid Amin, Salman Amin, Sameer Shaikh, Ahmed A. Madfa & Mohammad Khursheed Alam has also played a part in conducting the research.
The research “Prevalence of dental caries in Pakistan: a systematic review and meta-analysis” has recently been published online in the journal BMC Oral Health.