PATTERNS OF DENTAL-CARIES SEVERITY IN CHINESE KINDERGARTEN-CHILDREN

The dental caries status of a population group is traditionally descri bed by mean values of decayed, missing and filled teeth or surfaces (D MFT or S). Because of the limitations of the DMF values alone, additio nal measures of dental caries become important. A system of describing the pattern of dental caries attack hierarchically according to sever ity of caries was suggested by Poulsen & Horowitz (Community Dent Oral Epidemiol 1974;2:7-11). The purpose of the present study was to analy ze caries data from a group of 3-6-year-old Chinese kindergarten child ren according to this hierarchical system, assess the hierarchical ass umptions of the system with deciduous teeth and evaluate its usefulnes s as an additional caries description for a kindergarten population. A s part of a longitudinal field trial, baseline caries data were collec ted from 452 children. Caries was registered by tooth surface without the use of radiographs. Each child was assigned to one of six mutually exclusive zones of increasing caries severity, from zone 0=caries fre e through zone 5, the most severe, assuming that once a child was clas sified into a given zone it automatically belonged to all zones of les ser severity (except zone 0). On the basis of the original six zones, 61% of the children were classified correctly according to the hierarc hical concept, but different alternative models which merged one or mo re zones together demonstrated varying percentages of correct classifi cation, the cariologically most acceptable one placing 83% correctly. For each age group there was a close correlation between mean dmfs and increasing severity. The hierarchical model provides a valuable addit ional description of the caries status in deciduous teeth and is consi stent with professional and epidemiological knowledge of caries attack patterns.