Establishing dental recall interval for Pakistani children: A longitudinal study

Area of Science:

• Pediatric Dentistry
• Dental Public Health
• Epidemiology

Background:

• Dental caries remains a significant public health issue globally.
• Establishing appropriate dental recall intervals is crucial for effective caries management in children.
• Longitudinal studies are essential to accurately determine caries progression rates.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine the caries increment rate in 12-year-old schoolchildren.
• To inform the establishment of evidence-based dental recall intervals.
• To analyze caries progression in both cavitated and non-cavitated lesions.

Main Methods:

• A prospective longitudinal study was conducted in Bhakkar city, Pakistan, from May 2016 to October 2017.
• Caries progression was measured using the Modified Beck's method (adjusted caries increment) over 18 months.
• Statistical analysis included Bonferroni correction and data analysis using SPSS and Stata.

Main Results:

• Out of 226 enrolled schoolchildren, 147 (65%) completed all four measurements.
• A statistically significant high caries increment was observed in cavitated lesions compared to baseline (p=0.0001).
• The caries increment rate was low for cavitated lesions alone.

Conclusions:

• While cavitated lesions showed a low caries increment rate, merging cavitated and non-cavitated lesions revealed a high overall caries increment.
• These findings suggest that a combined approach to lesion assessment is necessary for accurate caries progression evaluation.
• The study provides data to guide the optimization of dental recall intervals for pediatric populations.