Andrea Ceron; Viviana Castillo & Pedro Aravena
Summary
In Chile, the prevalence of dental caries history in children aged 6 and 12 years is 70.3% and 62.5% respectively. Therefore, the Oral Health Program of the National Board of Student Aid and Scholarships (JUNAEB) carry out promotion, prevention and dental treatment to reduce this rate in more vulnerable populations, such as in Frutillar schoolchildren. The aim was to determine caries prevalence using dmft and DMFT rates in 10-year-old children treated at the JUNAEB Dental Module in Frutillar between 2007 and 2010. Descriptive study. Records were collected from 10 years old patients treated at the JUNAEB Dental Module between January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2010. For each year, we registered the number of patients, sex and DMFT/dmft index. We evaluated the association of demographics with the history of caries using the chi-square test, t test and ANOVA (p<0.05). There were 389 patients. 83.03% had a history of dental caries. The average DMFT and dmft was 1.56 (SD±1.8) and 1.65 (SD±1.94) respectively. There was a significant reduction in dental caries history (p=0.04) and DMFT index (p=0.001) in the last year. There was no association between dental caries history and sex or number of patients (p=0.57). The prevalence of of 10-year-old dental caries history decreased significantly between 2007 and 2010. Ongoing cohort studies are warranted to assess the actual effect of the program in children between 6 and 12 years old.
KEY WORDS: dental caries, dmft index, prevalence, children, Chile.
How to cite this article
CERON, A.; CASTILLO, V. & ARAVENA, P. Caries prevalence in 10-year-old school children, Frutillar, 2007-2010. Int. J. Odontostomat., 5(2):203-207, 2011.