Abstract

Background: Bangka Belitung Province is the region with the highest population rate of tooth decay in Indonesia. At Riskesdas 2007 it was reported in Bangka Belitung province, the population aged 12 years and over have experienced dental caries by 86.8% and those with active caries are not getting treatment of 50.8%. From previous studies in Bangka Belitung Province known that an average of 5 teeth per-person has experienced decay in the tooth are 3.6 pulled, 0.35 dental caries is left unattended and only 0.05 is filled. This portrait of the situation of dental services in Bangka Belitung Province which is dominated by the service extractions. The purpose of the study is to determine the status of dental health and dental treatment patterns in Bangka Belitung. Methods: It is a descriptive cross sectional design (cross-sectional), while the number of survey respondents are 1152 people. Results: The lowest dental health status (the highest DMF-T index) is in the are age group of > 60 years in which the women were higher than men. The most efforts to address a toothache or dental abnormalities tooth extraction (77.6%), the administration of drugs to relieve pain (77.3%), counseling (34.8%), and dental fillings (33.1%). Conclusion: The dental health status in Bangka Belitung province is very low, with the DMF-T index is very high seen in the age group of > 60 years, followed by 35–44 year of age group. Treatment efforts most are extractions, this means people is too late in seeking dental health care. Recommendation: need to improve dental health services quality and access ability to the dental health care facilities because this is closely related to the incidence of dental caries.