Oral health of public dental patients in rural areas

Oral health among adults in Australia has improved in recent decades, with dramatic reductions in complete tooth loss. However, public dental patients remain a group with reported high levels of emergency care and associated higher levels of tooth extraction compared with the general population (DSRU, 1993). This report describes the oral health of public dental patients in rural and urban areas by age and type of visit based on a total of 2,746 dental patients who were examined by the dental authorities in four States/Territories of Australia, providing a representative sample of the public dental patients they treated during the 2001-02 period.