한국 성인의 배우자 동거여부에 따른 치과의료기관 이용 및 미치료에 관한 조사

A Survey on the Use of Dental Medical Institutions and Unmet Dental Care among Korean Adults According to Live with Spouse

Objectives: This paper was written with the aim of providing basic data for expanding access to dental care and the use of dental services by analyzing whether or not Korean adults’ visits to dental institutions correlate to their marital status. Methods: Raw data from the 9th 1st year (2022) National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, conducted by the Korean Disease Control and Prevention Agency, were analyzed using SPSS Version 21.0 (IBM, United States). Results: The study results revealed that people who do not live with a spouse visited dental institutions 1.379 times less often in the past year (p = 0.002), compared to those who do live with a partner, and their rate of untreated dental needs was 1.610 times greater (p < 0.001) than those who are partnered. Conclusions: Based on the study’s results, we suggest that, to improve access to dental care, when developing policies or systems, research should be conducted on ways to increase access by individualizing approaches to consider not only age and income levels, but also family structure and marital status.