Dental caries and its interrelation with several social factors

Abstract

The studies of Science, Technology and Society in Cuba are aimed to participate and fecundate traditions of social theory and thoughts, as well as educational and technologic-scientific strategies the country have fomented during the last decades. Researching on science and technology is an objective shared by various long-tradition disciplines as History, Sociology, and Philosophy. From the most remote times the man has had a ceaseless concern for the illnesses of the chewing apparatus and its repair. The dental caries is multifactorial and, currently, it is the most frequent chronic disease of the human being, because between 90 % and 95 % of the population suffers this pathology, being responsible of half of the teeth lost. We carried out a bibliographic review in Infomed data bases. 26 articles were chosen, 70 % of them published in the last five years. The used key words were: dental caries, social factors, risk factors. In most of the reviewed articles we found evidence that nowadays the population still does not acknowledge enough dental caries importance, because it is not a mortal disease. Social conditions are the ones determining the health status of the individuals and the human communities; this is an elemental thesis for approaching current medical care.