The Effect of Nutritional Status on Dental Caries Levels for Students in Grades V and VI Of SDN 2 Molawe North Konawe Regency

Dental and oral health is a health problem that requires comprehensive treatment, because dental problems are broad-dimensional and have a wide impact that includes physical, mental, and social factors for individuals suffering from dental diseases (Amelia et al. 2022). One of the dominant dental and oral health diseases in Indonesia is dental caries or cavities. Dental caries makes children experience loss of chewing power and impaired digestion, resulting in suboptimal growth (Kusmana 2021). Nutritional problems in school-age children are health problems that affect the future and intelligence of children, it requires more serious attention, one of which is nutritional status. Nutritional intake is very much needed at the beginning of children's growth and development, school-age children are the age most vulnerable to the occurrence of dental caries because of poor child hygiene patterns, and poor children's diet, so that if there is a nutritional imbalance it can cause prolonged consequences and can settle on biological functions and salivary glands. The type of research used is quantitative observational analysis with a cross sectional approach. The sampling technique was carried out using the Slovin formula where the number of samples obtained was 40 respondents. The nutritional status obtained in the undernutrition criteria was 12 (30%), normal criteria were 23 (57.5%), overweight criteria were 5 (12.5%). Meanwhile, the caries rate obtained in the very low category was 28 (70%), the low criteria were 7 (17.5%), the medium criteria were 1 (2.5%), and the high criteria were 5 (10%). A sig of 0.000 (<0.000) was obtained, which means that there is an influence between nutritional satatus and the incidence of dental caries. It is recommended that the school implement UKGS well so that it can pay attention to the dental and oral health of students. Then students and parents are expected to be more concerned about dental and oral health, pay attention to the food consumed so as not to cause dental caries and nutritional status problems.