Need for dental care among medical staff working in the China Antarctic stations

• Published in: International Journal of Circumpolar Health
• Main Authors: Wenxiang Mi, Huayan Guo, Wanxian Yu, Shuo Wang, Ting Pan, Shaohai Wang
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2023
• Subjects: China Antarctic station; dental care; dental problems; medical staff; Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine; RC955-962; Antarctic; Arctic; Antarc*; Circumpolar Health; International Journal of Circumpolar Health
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1080/22423982.2023.2179453; https://doaj.org/article/284403eed5f24f47ae98166433f54421

ABSTRACTEven though China Antarctic medical care has made huge progress, dental care has always been a neglected area. Dental health is well-known to be closely related with life quality and work efficiency. Hence, knowing the dental care situation there and providing ways to improve are urgently needed. We choose doctors who worked in China Antarctic station as a window to see the whole picture by sending questionnaire. The results showed dental visits ranked second high, the ratio of doctors who got pre-departure dental knowledge education and screen is low. What is worse, none of them got any after-departure dental check. Their dental knowledge is not as good as we expect, and they were troubled by dental problems in Antarctic. Interestingly, most dental problems were treated by non-dentist with no essential equipment, but 2/3 of them were satisfied with the outcome. As for the dental-related diet and behaviour, snacks eating and alcohol drinking are the strongest predictors of dental pain and gum problem. Those findings are crucial to Antarctic dental care and research.