Billions Suffer From Untreated Dental Problems: Study

Billions of people in the world suffer from serious untreated dental problems, according to a study published in the Journal of Dental Research.

The study, led by professor Wagner Marcenes of Queen Mary, University of London, states that nearly half of the total population, i.e., 3.9 billion people in the world suffer from serious oral conditions.

In the study, Marcenes investigated oral health as a part of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2010 study.

While conducting the study, he noticed that dental caries was the most common of all the 291 major diseases and injuries that was assessed by the GBD 2010 study. Dental caries is untreated tooth decay or cavity in permanent teeth, which affects 35 percent of the population worldwide.

According to Marcenes, nearly 4 billion people in the world suffer from untreated oral health conditions, leading to problems such as toothache, preventing them from eating and sleeping properly, which is a disability. This does not include those with small cavities or mild gum diseases.

The estimations produced by GBD 2010 state that disability linked with severe tooth loss existed among those who reported moderate heart failure and moderate consequences of stroke. The study also assessed that oral conditions were responsible for the health loss of 224 years per 100,000 people.

The problems of oral conditions are moving from severe tooth loss to periodontitis and untreated caries. The global burden of oral diseases increased 20 percent between 1990 and 2010, while a reduction of 0.5 per cent was observed for all conditions together.

"Tooth loss is often the final result when preventive or conservative treatments for tooth decay or gum disease fail or are unavailable. It is likely that current dental services are coping better to prevent tooth loss than in the past but major efforts are needed to prevent the occurrence and development of gum diseases and tooth decay. Ironically the longer a person keeps their teeth the greater the pressure on services to treat them," Marcenes says.