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Early childhood caries--incidence and need for treatment
M M Dimitrova1, M P Kukleva, V K Kondeva
1Higher Medical Institute, Department of Pediatric Dentistry, 24 Veliko Tarnovo St., 4000 Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
Introduction:
The peculiarities of early childhood require specific approaches to dental caries treatment. The necessity of discussing this problem has justified the undertaking of this study.
Aim:
The aim was to determine caries incidence rate and the need for its treatment in children aged 12 to 47 months.
Material And Methods:
The study included 370 children from Plovdiv. It was conducted in accordance with the World Health Organization requirements for epidemiological study of dental caries. Three age groups were formed: group I (12-23 months), group II (24-35 months), and group III (36-47 months). Dental caries on a cavitation level was diagnosed by means of a probe and a mirror. The indicators of caries incidence--total and separately by active and treated caries, as well as the percentage of surfaces with active caries were determined.
Results:
Caries incidence rate in group I was 0.54, in group II--1.45 and in group III--1.85. A rapid increase of these values was observed between I and II group--P < 0.001. In all age groups the active caries incidence, as well as the percentage of surfaces with active caries were considerably higher than that of treated caries incidence, P < 0.001.
Conclusions:
In the studied populations dental caries is treated only in a very small number of cases. Further studies are necessary for determining the causes for this--causes attributable to the parents, as well to the practising dentists.