Dental caries experience and treatment needs of green marble mine laborers in Udaipur district, Rajasthan, India.

Background And Objectives: The study was undertaken at Kesariyaji, located in Udaipur district of Rajasthan. There are about 3 million workers who marble mine at Rajasthan. Living conditions of these workers are substandard and most of them are immigrant workers living in tiny shacks. Majority of them belong to lower socioeconomic status with poor educational background. The present study was carried out to estimate dental caries prevalence and treatment needs of laborers working in the green marble mines of Udaipur district.

Basic Research Design: The data was collected using the methods and standards recommended by the WHO. Dentition status and treatment needs along with decayed, missing, and filled teeth (DMFT) index, and decayed, missing, and filled surfaces score were recorded. Standard error of mean was calculated for all the mean values of treatment needs. There were three examiners, who were trained before the survey for inter-examiner variability, and the reliability was tested by means of weighted kappa statistics, which was 90%.

Participants: The study population comprised 513 men in four age groups of 18-25, 26-34, 35-44, and 45-54 years, respectively.

Results: The mean DMFT for all age groups was 3.13 with highest mean of 4.0 for the age group of 45-54 years. Mean decayed teeth were 2.60, 3.33, 1.46, and 1.5 for the age groups 15-24, 25-34, 35-44, and 45-54 years, respectively. Filled component was nil for all age groups. Most of the subjects required one surface filling with a very less proportion needing pulp care.

Conclusions: The missing component constituted the major part of DMFT index in the 45-54 years age group and the absence of filled component in the whole study population implies that the treatment needs of the study population are unmet. Thus, intervention in the form of oral health promotion and curative services are the need of the hour.