Dental Caries Surveillance System

[Tanatorn Tilkanont]

Dental Caries (or tooth decay) is one of the most common oral health problems that could have complications with severe pain, oral abscess from bacterial infections, etc. This disease begins with mild symptoms and can be detected by patients themselves or diagnosed by dental professionals. However, the disease could be preventable by behavior changes, for instance, good quality tooth brushing and control of food intake. Therefore, it is crucial to recognize the prevalence of dental caries and the burden of poor oral health care and to identify the risk factors. The data from the surveillance system will support the implementation of oral health promotion and intervention. Finally, people’s oral health will be better, have fewer complications, and improve their quality of life.

Please see more details of the surveillance system in the video presentation. Thank you.

[Siriphak Pongthai]

Your presentation is very nice. I agree that dental caries is the most common oral problem and preventable. But sometimes it was neglected because some of patients don’t want to go to see dentist.
I like when you mentioned on warning message and audit trail. The warning message is really help in questionnaire survey. I think at least 2 time points of warning messages will be good.

By the way as one of your objectives is on the prevalence of dental caries in adults and elderly population, I wonder why the age in case definition was set at 35 years old. In case that the age was set at 18 years old, you may have recruited more people in your surveillance program and come across various risk factors for behavior and clinical assessment.

Thank you for sharing your wonderful surveillance program!

[Tanyawat Saisongcroh]

Great presentation. Thank you for sharing the interesting issue as dental caries is one of a major healthcare problem worldwide.

For dental caries, besides dietary-microbial disease consideration, behavioral, psychological and social factors also play a significant role in the disease process. The information of prevalence and risk factors could help in prevention and promote healthcare such as hygiene and fluoride campaign.

Your rational shown the affected group are adult and elderly, however, it might benefit more if younger ages are included in the system or perhaps, perform in separate particular system with different target group.

I agree with the indicators especially for information quality, since there are both paper and electronic based uses in the system

[Kansiri Apinantanakul]

Thank you for sharing
Actually, at first, this disease is not quite attractive for me.
But your presentation did convince me

I agree with Dr.Tanyawat that the socio-economic factor should be considered as well.
I like the way you start your surveillance with passive first and scale up to large active surveillance.

I personally think that you could use the OCR technology to support and reduce workload of dental staff on paperwork.

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