Perception on dental appearance among secondary school students in Kigali

Abstract

Background: In the period of adolescence, dental appearance takes on significant importance in the construction of personal identity and this may influence psychological adjustment and relationship status.

Objective: To determine perception on dental appearance among adolescents in Kigali secondary schools.

Material and methods: This was a cross sectional study involving 768 students in three secondary schools in Kigali city. The schools and classes were randomly selected; a sstructured questionnaire modified from Tin-Oo et al (2011) were used to gather information on particulars, perception and satisfaction on dental appearance, perceived factors and OIDP from the study participants. The SPSS version 16 was used to analyze the data. The perception with general appearance, color, arrangement and shape of anterior teeth, each had 5-point scale with the value ranging from “ not good at all to very good. A summative index of the four questions with score ranging from 4 “lowest” to 20 “highest” was taken. This was dichotomized into a binary variable using midvalue (median) 12 as a cut-off point yielding 1 = “poor” (summative index 4 – 12) and 2 “good” (summative index 13 – 20).

Results and discussion: Males constituted 52% of the study participants. Total of 60% had positive perception on dental appearance, 48.8% present tooth colour dissatisfaction. Around 43% had at least one impact; the most impacted performance was eating (24.5%).

Conclusion: A high proportion of adolescents had positive perception and were satisfied with the appearance and colour of their front teeth.