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Use of children's oral health services in Finland with special reference to heavy consumption
Author(s) -
Milén Annell,
Laaksonen Tarja,
Tala Heikki
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
community dentistry and oral epidemiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.061
H-Index - 101
eISSN - 1600-0528
pISSN - 0301-5661
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0528.1988.tb00548.x
Subject(s) - medicine , socioeconomic status , consumption (sociology) , environmental health , public health , oral health , health care , family medicine , population , nursing , economic growth , social science , sociology , economics
The consumption of oral health services among 4–16‐yr‐old children in Finland is described, including an analysis of heavy consumption. Data representative of all Finnish children were collected for 4518 children from municipal health centers and homes. The response rate was 85%. Children with orthodontic visits during the year were excluded from the analyses. Of the preschoolchildren 12% and of the school‐age children 4% did not use any oral health services during the studied year. Non‐users did not differ from the others in terms of socioeconomic status, distance to a health center or type of residential area. Public oral health services were used very unevenly. Half of the children consumed only one‐fifth of the services and the next one‐third used about one‐third of the services. The heavy consumers, about one‐fifth of the total, used as much as half of all the sendees. Among preschoolchildren, the heavy consumers were mainly from lower socioeconomic groups. In contrast, no clear predictive factors were found for heavy consumption among the schoolchildren. Heavy consumers had more both treated and untreated caries than the other children did. Their treatment was mainly restorative; at least half of them did not receive adequate preventive care. Finnish public oral health care clearly should make more efforts to ensure that heavy consumers of dental services do not remain so.