Barriers to Utilization, Unmet Oral Health Needs and Comprehensive Oral Health Profiling for Special Children in Kanchipuram District: A Cross-sectional Study

Objectives: This research intends to identify and analyse barriers such as lack of awareness, limited access to services and low priority to oral health which hinder the usage of oral health care among special children in the Kanchipuram District. Through the assessment of the unmet oral health needs, to create a comprehensive oral health profile for these disabilities by finding the dental caries experience, oral hygiene status, periodontal status, prevalence of malocclusion and providing a detailed understanding of their oral health status and help in improving their oral health outcomes. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted for 411 disabled children. The people were gathered into the mentally, physically, visually and hearing impaired. Clinical assessment was recorded utilizing by the OHIS index, dft/DMFT index, WHO 1997, DAI index and the unmet treatment needs are also assessed. The chi-square test and ANOVA were employed to identify the significant (p<0.05) variation in the oral status. Results: Out of 411 participants, 68.9% had dental caries. It was seen that the pervasiveness of decay was high in the mentally restrained (31.6%) and least in the hearing impaired (27.3%). The oral hygiene status was good in 21.4%, fair in 37.7% and poor in 40.8% of the research populace. Conclusions: Among the disabled children, there was a complete disregard for dental health. When compared with hearing and orthopedically physically challenged, the mentally and visually impaired persons had much worse oral health outcomes. So, enhancing access to dental services and oral health education is imperative.