Regional Aspects of Providing Dental Care to the Population

INTRODUCTION: An assessment of dynamics of requests for dental care in the regions is necessary to obtain an idea of the existing tendencies in the development of dental diseases, risk groups, and also areas for optimizing dental care and elaborating approaches that contribute to increase in its availability and development of preventive programs for various groups of the population. AIM: A retrospective analysis of the populations requests for dental care for 2011–2021 in the Mari El Republic. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The parameters of dental care for the population of the federal statistical observation form No. 30 ‘Information on the medical organization’ for the Mari El Republic for 2011–2021 were used. To characterize and evaluate the studied parameters, the median (Me), Pearsons chi-square (χ2), probability value (p), and the coefficient of determination of the trend line of time series (R2) were calculated. For statistical data processing, the add-in program for Microsoft Excel Atte Stat 12.0.5 was used. RESULTS: In the Mari El Republic from 2011 to 2021, a steady decrease was observed in both the overall and primary requests for dental care by the population (from 0.80 to 0.16 per capita, R2=0.75 and from 0.29 to 0.06 per capita, R2=0.72 respectively). About a quarter of dental caries cases in adult patients were detected with complications, which significantly decreased from 24.6% to 18.4% (χ2=11.6; p=0.001), but increased among children from 19.5% to 20.4% (χ2=2.6; p=0.01). According to the results of preventive examinations, children needed oral sanitation more often than adults (Me=66.3% [95% CI 68.7–63.9] and Me=57.9% [95% CI 63.0–52.1] respectively). The absolute number of municipal dental offices in the republic had an unstable downward trend (R2=0.04). CONCLUSION: The unfavorable situation in terms of coverage of the child population with dental care and high prevalence of diseases requires in-depth study to develop management decisions. One of the important preventive areas is hygiene education and training of the population, in childrens groups as well.