Oral Health Status Among Deaf Children in Cuttack City: A Cross-Sectional Study

Aim The aim was to assess the oral health status of hard-of-hearing children using the WHO Oral Health Assessment Form for Children 2013 and to evaluate their dietary and oral hygiene practices using the Oral Health Questionnaire given by the same. Methodology A cross-sectional study was conducted among 90 hard-of-hearing children aged five to 19 years in Cuttack city. The World Health Organization oral health assessment form 2013 for children was used for data collection. Type-III clinical examination were carried out using a mouth mirror, explorer and WHO periodontal probe. The resulting data were entered into Excel sheets (Microsoft, Redmond, WA, USA) and transferred to SPSS version 25 software (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA). The chi-square test and multiple logistic regression analysis were used. Results Forty-nine children were aged between 13-16 years of age. Most of them had profound level of hearing loss (68%). The prevalence of dental caries was found to be 76.9% and 82.4% suffered from gingival bleeding. The logistic regression analysis demonstrated a significant association between the level of hearing loss and dental caries presence (p = 0.027), suggesting that children with higher levels of hearing loss may be more prone to dental caries. However, age (p = 0.882) and gender (p = 0.859) did not exhibit significant associations with dental caries presence. The age group has a significant association with gingival bleeding (p = 0.001), while gender shows a borderline significance (p = 0.090). However, the level of hearing loss does not appear to be significantly associated with gingival bleeding (p = 0.556). Conclusion In this study, the oral health status of these children was found to be considerably poor. There is a considerable need for treatment and prevention of oral disease among this population.