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[Dental caries in a school population with a program of periodical rinses with sodium fluoride]
S Fuentes García1, C Gutiérrez González
1Area Básica de Salud de Castelldefels, Barcelona.
Objective:
To appraise the level of school-children's dental health after five years in operation of the buccal-dental health programme, in which children received fortnightly rinses of sodium fluoride at 0.2%.
Design:
A crossover study. School survey of the 1993-4 academic year.
Participants:
A total of 1,674 school-children belonging to the first (6 years old), third (8), fifth (10) and eighth (13) years of EGB (basic) in the thirteen schools in this city.
Measurements And Main Results:
Two odontologists checked the children according to the W.H.O. norms. The Index of individuals free of caries and the prevalence of caries were calculated. The first index showed its highest value at 10 (78.4%) and its lowest at 8 (53.34%). CAOD showed its lowest level at 6 years old (0.02%) and progressively rose to 13 (1.41). COD went up from 6 (0.96) to 8 (1.09) and afterwards went down till 13 years old (0.05). The restoration index was low in worn out teeth and particularly high in permanent ones (68.08%) at 13.
Conclusions:
The caries indexes are lower than in the majority of studies carried out in Spain, being most similar to a study carried out in the county of Mayorga de Campos (Valladolid) in 1988, where fluoridated water exists in a natural form (0.67-0.87 mg/litre), as well as to other areas in Catalonia where the same fluoride rinses were performed.