Preventive dentistry in a health centre: effectiveness and cost

The clinical and economic effects of a programme of preventive dentistry for children in an inner-city health centre are compared with those for traditional restorative care. Reductions in the rate of dental caries are estimated to be 70% for children aged 4-6 after 4 years in the programme (dmft) and 85% for children aged between 7 and 10 years after 4 years (DMFT). The cost-effectiveness analysis on which the economic appraisal is based identifies the issue of differences in the quality of output as critical to choices between the two treatment regimes. The preventive programme was primarily intended for pre-school children; for this younger group, assumptions about the quality of the preventive outcome would have to value it at between 0.8 and 1.2 times the quality of the restorative outcome in order to make up the difference in cost between the two regimes. For 7-10 year olds, the 4-year analysis showed the preventive programme to be more costly than restorative care largely because of low rates of incremental change at these ages. These rates were partly influenced by the design of the study and partly by the eruption status of the permanent dentition across this age-group. There is a need for further study of measures of dental outcome which combine aspects of both the quality and length of life of teeth.