Caries prevention in a community-dwelling older population

A clinical trial was conducted to compare the effect of different caries-preventive strategies on caries progression in lower-income, ethnically diverse persons 60 years of age and older. Two hundred and ninety-seven subjects were randomized into one of five experimental groups. Group 1 received usual care from a public health department or a private practitioner. Group 2 received an educational program of 2 h duration implemented twice a year. Group 3 received the educational program plus a 0.12% chlorhexidine rinse weekly. Group 4 received the education and chlorhexidine interventions and a fluoride varnish application twice a year. Group 5 received all the above interventions as well as scaling and root planing every 6 months throughout the 3-year study. A carious event was defined as the onset of a carious lesion, a filling, or an extraction on a surface which was sound at baseline. Two hundred and one subjects remained in the study for the 3-year period. Groups that received usual intraoral procedures (groups 3, 4, and 5) had a 27% reduction for coronal caries events (p = 0.09) and 23% for root caries events (p = 0.15), when compared to the groups that received no intraoral procedures (groups 1 and 2). Routine preventive treatments may have had only a small-to-moderate effect upon caries development.