5-YEAR INCIDENCE OF CORONAL AND ROOT CARIES IN 60, 70 AND 80-YEAR-OLDSWEDISH INDIVIDUALS

The 5-year incidence of caries was studied in a random sample of 60-, 70- and 80-year-old inhabitants of Goteborg, with 69, 51 and 28 indivi duals in the different age groups. One aim of the study was to introdu ce a root caries index (DMFRS%) in which the missing root surfaces are taken into account. This study, as well as other recent studies, has shown that dental caries is the main reason for tooth extraction. The study also revealed that coronal and root caries occurred more frequen tly in elderly than younger people and the incidence of root caries wa s positively correlated with coronal caries (r = 0.3, p<0.001) and neg atively correlated with the number of remaining teeth (r = 0.4, p<0.00 01). The 5-year DMFRS% increment values increased with advancing age f rom 2.7 involved root surfaces per 100 susceptible ones in the 60-year -olds to 4.8 in the 70-year-olds and 10.7 in the 80-year-olds. It shou ld be mentioned, however, that only people able to come to the clinic were enrolled in the study and an analysis of the attrition bias indic ated that oral health may be worse in those who are too ill to partici pate. The frequent utilization of dental carl among the participants w as reflected in the finding of several new fillings and prosthetic cro wns. Most of the very elderly people with carious lesions at baseline, however, had developed new lesions at the margins of the newly made r estorations.