Implementation and evaluation of an interdisciplinary preventive program to prevent early childhood caries

Since early childhood caries (ECC) is a major disease in the public health sector, an interdisciplinary prevention concept to avert this disease was developed, launched in a project region, and evaluated. It was examined whether the emergence of ECC could be prevented or curbed with the newly developed program.

The program encompasses seven pulses of information from an interdisciplinary team (gynecologists, midwives, pediatricians, dentists, municipal social services, and the public health office). The primary dependent variables were caries experience and prevalence among the 3- to 4-year-olds who took part in the ECC prevention program, compared to children of the same age without such measures. The effect of the prevention program was assessed by means of a "historical" comparison. The dental diagnoses were performed by two calibrated dentists based on the "ICDAS collapsed." Data on diet and preventive behavior were gathered using a standardized parental questionnaire. The significance was tested using the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test.

There were 661 3- to 4-year-olds in the control group and 706 in the test group. The mean d_3-6mf-t for the control group (0.92) was significantly higher than that for the test group (0.46). While 78.8% of the children examined in the control group exhibited predominantly sound primary dentition, this was the case for 86.3% of the test group. The proportion of children with S-ECC was 7.9% in the test group and 14.5% in the control group. The test group differed significantly from the control group both in terms of reported diet and dental hygiene habits.

The interdisciplinary prevention program presented here is an effective concept for preventing ECC and considerably helps reduce problems in the treatment of small children.