PERBEDAAN PH SALIVA ANTARA ANAK DENGAN INDESK KARIES RENDAH DAN INDEKS KARIRS TINGGI

Caries is dental disease which has highest prevalence at children in early mix-dentition age. Caries caused by some factors, there are host, glucose, microorganism, and time. All of those factors were influenced by oral environment that controlled by saliva. Glucose is fermented by microorganism and it produce acid, so that the oral environment pH will become lower. The continuous of oral pH decreasing will cause demineralization on tooth surface and soon will become caries. This analytic observational research used cross sectional design. The purpose of this research was to determine the differences of salivary pH between children with low caries index and high caries index by measuring pH of unstimulated saliva. There are 60 children between 6-8 years old from Padokan 2 elementary school as subjects of this research that selected by purposive sampling technique. Group I consist of 30 children which has low caries index and group II consist of 30 children which has high caries index. Unstimulated saliva collected from each children for 3 minutes then the salivary pH is measured using pH strip. Normality test use Kolmogorov-Smirnov showed that the data distribution is not normal (p<0,05). Statistical analysis used Mann Whitney test showed that there was significant result (p<0,05) with mean value 7,6067±0,30843 for group I and 6,6867±0,36647 for group II. In conclusion, there was significantly difference in salivary pH between children with low caries index and children with high caries index. Children with low caries index have higher salivary pH than children with high caries index.