[Prevalence of dental caries in children in Vopnafjördur]

The prevalence of dental caries in Iceland has been high for many years and the improvements reported from the other Nordic countries in recent years has been slow to appear in Iceland. In this study the prevalence of dental caries among young children in Vopnafjörour, a small community in East Iceland, was investigated in the spring of 1989. Virtually all children in the community born between 1982 and 1985 were examined clinically and with bite-wing radiographs and caries scored as dmfs and DMFS according to standard criteria. The results indicated that children in this community did not have poor dental health, no worse than children from other parts of the country. Sixty-five per cent of four year old children were caries-free which is similar to the proportion reported from other Nordic countries. Children living in the country districts surrounding the town had significantly better dental health than those living in the fishing town itself. It was also apparent that four year old children attended the dentist less regularly than those aged 6 years and this was attributed to the failure of the State Health Insurance Scheme to reimburse the full cost of treatment for children younger than 6 years. Caries was unevenly distributed among the children with 78% of the total amount of caries being found in 21% of children. Clearly the best way to reduce further the prevalence of dental caries would be to concentrate effort on those children most at risk.