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Updated: Aug 8, 2026

Oral Health Assessment by Lay Personnel for Older Adults
Published on: February 2, 2020
Introducing a clinical-behavioural scoring system for children's oral hygiene
Carlo E Medina-Solís1, Gerardo Maupomé, América Segovia-Villanueva
1Centro de Investigación en Sistemas de Salud del Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública, Cuenavaca, México. cemedinas@yahoo.com
Objectives:
Developing and testing a clinical-behavioural scoring system for assessing children's oral hygiene.
Materials And Methods:
One clinical variable (the presence of dental plaque, measured using Silness and Loe's index) and one behavioural variable (self-reported tooth brushing frequency) were combined into secondary data analysis of research databases for 3-6-year-olds and 6-13-year-olds in a Mexican community. The combined scoring is an ordinal scale that depicts suitable, moderate and inadequate hygiene. Blinded dental examiners also collected dmft/DMFT data in standardised conditions. Data was analysed with Spearman's rho, Kruskall-Wallis, non-parametric tests for trends and Pearson's chi2 tests.
Results:
1303 children aged 3-6 years old and 1644 children aged 6-13 years old participated in the study. Clear relationships existed between the combined scoring system and dmft (p < 0.01) and between the scoring system and DMFT (p < 0.01), suggesting that the combined clinical-behavioural scoring system is a reasonably accurate measurement of the relationship between caries experience and oral hygiene in children in the given setting.
Conclusions:
The combined clinical-behavioural scoring system is a simple, easy-to-use tool that incorporates clinical and behavioural data commonly found in dental systems. Whether the clinical-behavioural scoring system can be generalised remains to be established.
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