Introduction:

the World Health Organization defines dental caries as a global health problem that affects between 60 and 90% of the population. It is considered a communicable disease of multifactorial origin, which evolves progressively until it causes the destruction of hard tissues.

Objective:

to determine the relationship between decayed, missing and filled teeth and the limitation to socialize in schoolchildren from Ecuador.

Methods:

a descriptive correlational study was carried out on a population of 154 schoolchildren aged 12 years from the El Batán parish, Cuenca-Ecuador (2016); data was entered into the SPSS program for the statistical analysis, where descriptive statistics were performed for each of the variables and for the limitation to socialize.

Results:

it was possible to verify that the target population had a very low DMFT index (32.5%); in the same way it was evidenced that 62.7% did not have limitations when socializing. A positive association, with a significance level of p=0.002, was shown regarding the correlation between both variables. One of the main limitations of the study was the limited contact with the participants. We recommend to carry out longitudinal epidemiological investigations in order to observe the variation of the correlation coefficient of the variables in the pre-treatment and post-treatment phases.

Conclusion:

we showed, at the end of the study, that there is a statistical correlation between the DMFT index and the limitation in socializing performance in 12-year-old schoolchildren from the El Batán parish.