Advances in oral health knowledge of Greek navy recruits and their socioeconomic determinants

A total of 2,764 healthy subjects (1511 in 1985, and 1253 in 1996) answered a standardized questionnaire of oral health issues. Respondents were stratified in 3 groups, according to their educational status (ES); their responses were compared using the chi-square statistic. The evaluation of socioeconomic indicators utilized longitudinal data from the national Household Expenditures Survey.An overall improvement was noted in the majority of "Knowledge" and "Attitudes" variables in 1996, as compared to 1985. Education seems to play an important role in both knowledge and attitudes. These changes may also be partially attributed to a shift in consuming standards from the coverage of main needs to income disposal directed towards the achievement of better quality of life.Although there is overwhelming evidence that periodontal disease and dental caries affect the majority of the population, their prevalence and severity varying according to age, sex, race, geographic areas, socioeconomic factors, local oral as well as systemic factors and methods of oral cleaning [1], there are no reliable national statistics in Greece. The available prevalence and incidence rates for both conditions depend on limited local evidence, as explained later. Lack of disease registries, lack of a functioning national primary care system, and absence of dedicated full-time research staff at major academic institutions are some of the reasons for such luck of nationwide information. The incomplete data that currently exists as a result of scarce surveys of oral health among children [2,3], as well as adults [4-8] suggest that both, periodontal disease and dental caries exhibit an overall high prevalence. It is also evident from these studies that the level of knowledge and the overall attitude towards various oral health issues were rated as low.The present study focused on how much young people knew about oral health in 1985 and then in 1996, what their intentions were and what may be some of