Sadjadpour Fatima, Hosseinichimeh Niyousha, Pahel Bhavna T, Metcalf Sara S
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Falls Church, VA, United States.
Private Practice of Pediatric Dentistry in Easley and Anderson, Easley, SC, United States.
Front Oral Health. 2024 Jan 31;4:1285347. doi: 10.3389/froh.2023.1285347. eCollection 2023.
Dental caries is a prevalent chronic disease among adolescents. Caries activity increases significantly during adolescence due to an increase in susceptible tooth surfaces, immature permanent tooth enamel, independence in pursuing self-care, and a tendency toward poor diet and oral hygiene. Dental caries in permanent teeth is more prevalent among adolescents in low-income families and racial/ethnic minority groups, and these disparities in adolescent dental caries experience have persisted for decades. Several conceptual and data-driven models have proposed unidirectional mechanisms that contribute to the extant disparities in adolescent dental caries experience. Our objective, using a literature review, is to provide an overview of risk factors contributing to adolescent dental caries. Specifically, we map the interactive relationships of multilevel factors that influence dental caries among adolescents. Such interactive multilevel relationships more closely reflect the complex nature of dental caries experience among the adolescent population. The methods that we use are two-fold: (1) a literature review using PubMed and Cochrane databases to find contributing factors; and (2) the system dynamics approach for mapping feedback mechanisms underlying adolescent dental caries through causal loop diagramming. The results of this study, based on the review of 138 articles, identified individual, family and community-level factors and their interactions contributing to dental caries experience in adolescents. Our results also provide hypotheses about the mechanisms underlying persistence of dental caries among adolescents.
Our findings may contribute to a deeper understanding of the multilevel and interconnected factors that shape the persistence of dental caries experience among adolescents.
龋齿是青少年中普遍存在的慢性疾病。由于易感牙面增加、恒牙釉质不成熟、自我护理独立性增强以及不良饮食和口腔卫生倾向，龋齿活动在青少年时期显著增加。恒牙龋齿在低收入家庭和种族/少数族裔青少年中更为普遍，青少年龋齿经历的这些差异已经持续了几十年。一些概念模型和数据驱动模型提出了单向机制，这些机制导致了青少年龋齿经历中现存的差异。我们的目标是通过文献综述，概述导致青少年龋齿的风险因素。具体来说，我们绘制影响青少年龋齿的多层次因素的交互关系。这种交互式多层次关系更紧密地反映了青少年人群龋齿经历的复杂本质。我们使用的方法有两个方面：（1）使用PubMed和Cochrane数据库进行文献综述以找出促成因素；（2）通过因果循环图绘制来映射青少年龋齿潜在反馈机制的系统动力学方法。基于对138篇文章的综述，本研究结果确定了个体、家庭和社区层面的因素及其相互作用，这些因素促成了青少年的龋齿经历。我们的结果还提供了关于青少年龋齿持续存在机制的假设。
我们的研究结果可能有助于更深入地理解塑造青少年龋齿经历持续存在的多层次和相互关联的因素。
