Differences of Salivary Ph, Feature, And Volume Of Children At Three Kindergartens With Different Socioeconomic Standard

Introduction: Saliva is the most important biological factor to protect against dental caries. When saliva flow is reduced, oral health problems such as dental caries and oral infections can develop. It was suggested that the effect of low salivary pH is more in plaque close to the area of susceptible tooth surface. The presence of saliva in pre-school age children is a significant indicator in oral health assessment oral health. There has been an association between salivary cortisol and socioeconomic variable. Descriptions above have encouraged us to examine the salivary pH, feature, and volume of pre-school-aged community. Thus, this study was aimed to describe the differences in salivary pH, feature, and volume of the children in the three pre-school with different location and socioeconomics aspect. Methods: Descriptive survey, with a population of preschool students in 3 different kindergartens with different socioeconomic environment. Inclusion criteria were the pre-school-aged community and got permission from parents. Exclusion criteria were a pre-school-aged community under medication treatment causes hyposalivation or hypersalivation and children who did not want to be involved in the study, with total sampling as the sampling technique, resulted in as much a 101 respondents as the study sample. The saliva was collected with unstimulated technique. Data analysis was performed using relative frequency distribution. Results: The salivary pH was slightly higher in male children than female by 0.1. The average pH value was 7.25. The salivary feature was mostly frothy bubbly, followed by thin and watery, and the sticky bubbly feature was found the least. The salivary volume of the pre-school-aged community was mostly in the very less category, followed by the less category, with no normal category was found. the p-values of salivary pH and salivary features were below 0.05 There are no significant differences between the salivary pH and salivary feature of children from the three studied kindergartens. However, there is a significant difference in the salivary volume found in children from kindergartens located in high socioeconomic standard and middle socioeconomic standard areas, which have a higher salivary volume than the children from kindergartens situated in areas with lower socioeconomic standard. Conclusion: since the reduced salivary volume was associated to children with lower socioeconomic standard, this association can justify the higher