Other
Anish Cheriyan, B.S. (he/him/his)
Pre-Doctoral Student
Touro College of Dental Medicine at New York Medical College, Hawthorne, NY
Touro College of Dental Medicine at New York Medical College
NEW HYDE PARK, New York, United States
Jaffer Shariff, DDS, MS, MPH, DPH
Director of Research | Assistant Professor, Periodontics
Touro College of Dental Medicine at New York Medical College, Hawthorne, NY
Hawthorne, New York, United States
Daniela Gurpegui-Abud, D.D.S.
Touro College of Dental Medicine
Ekaterina Krasilnikova, R.D.H., B.D.S.
Touro College of Dental Medicine
Jaffer Shariff, DDS, MS, MPH, DPH
Director of Research | Assistant Professor, Periodontics
Touro College of Dental Medicine at New York Medical College, Hawthorne, NY
Hawthorne, New York, United States
Carla A. Tornatore, DDS
Director of Pediatric Dentistry
Touro College of Dental Medicine at New York Medical College, Hawthorne, NY
Hawthorne, New York, United States
Purpose: Access to pediatric dental care is a long-established issue in the US. The aim of this project is to assess children’s comorbidities and their association with several variables, including socioeconomic status, and patients’ zipcode to better understand the community’s oral health. This information gives public health policy makers valuable insight to better comprehend specific issues, to help implement the right solutions, depreciate the number emergency visits, aiming to increase access to care, and ultimately decrease the budget that the federal government allocates for these emergency treatments. The secondary aim of this study is to help develop a workflow for academic institutions to standardize data collection to identify weaknesses and strengths to accommodate the community’s needs and improve the service provided.
Materials and
Methods: This cross-sectional study will compare the prevalence (SPSS v28) of all documented co-morbidities in all pediatric patients who have been seen for dental and oral-related visits at the Pediatric Dental Clinic of the Touro College of Dental Medicine between July 1, 2018, and December 30, 2022. De-identified data from Axium Electronic Health Records will be used.
Results: As ages increases, the odds of a patient presenting with caries was higher than those in 0-2 years. Caries and non-cavitated lesions in the 6-9 age-group was slightly higher than other age-groups. High caries risk and visible plaque was significant for the 3-5 age group. Higher income groups as well as recent immigrants had more caries , more non-cavitated lesions and had high caries risk. Caregiver with caries had children with higher plaque levels. Sex played a role in patients presenting with Asthma, Autism, Special Needs or Developmental Disorders compared to dental conditions. However, sociodemographics seemed to have an impact on dental conditions compared to medical conditions. Additional analyses pending.
Conclusions: This study will provide with guidelines to standardize data collection at any Pediatric Clinic in an academic setting, so to use patients’ oral health status and their location as a proxy to the community’s needs to better serve a specific population. It should also be used by schools to create outreach programs catered to the community, helping students understand how research can improve patient’s care.