Pattern of dental caries in 3-5 year old children in a children’s day care center : Medellín, Colombia
Introduction: Dental caries in preschool children, a pending health challenge, requires greater efforts to recognize the problem and to design intervention strategies. The purpose of this study was to identify experience and pattern distribution of dental caries lesions in children who attend a kindergarten in the city.
Materials and methods: A calibrated dentist examined 177 children 3-to 5- year-old, using ICDAS criteria. Caries experience (ECC) and severe early childhood caries (ECC-S) was calculated; the indexes d5-6ICDASmft, d5-6ICDASmfs, d1-6ICDASmft, d1-6ICDASmfs; as well as the percentages of affected teeth and individual surfaces and by homologous teeth.
Results: A 61% had ECC and 48% ECC-S with 95% CI (53.5; 68.5 and 40.4; 55.7) respectively. The d1-6 ICDASmft index was 3.3 ± 4.9 in 3-year-old children and 5.3 ± 4.8 in 5-year-old. Primary molars showed greater dental caries experience (32.8% to 45.2%), especially in occlusal (25.3% to 33.3%). The least affected teeth were the lower anterior (1.7% to 2.8%). The caries experience in homologous teeth showed statistically significant differences between the occlusal surfaces and the other surfaces in molars. In the incisors and canines, the buccal surface showed greater caries experience.
Conclusion: Dental caries affects the majority of children who attend an institution in Medellín, with a distribution of lesions similar to other studies; It is necessary to continue working to implement strategies for detection and timely control of the disease, according to the pattern found.
Copyright (c) 2020 Revista Nacional de Odontología
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Every single author of the articles has to declare that is an original unpublished work exclusively created by them, that it has not been submitted for simultaneous evaluation by another publication and that there is no impediment of any kind for concession of the rights provided for in the contract.
In this sense, the authors committed to await the result of the evaluation by the journal Revista Nacional de Odontologia before considering its submission to another medium; in case the response by that publication is positive, additionally, the authors committed to respond for any action involving claims, plagiarism or any other kind of claim that could be made by third parties.
At the same time, the authors have to declare that they are completely in agreement with the conditions presented in their work and that they cede all patrimonial rights. These rights involve reproduction, public communication, distribution, dissemination, transformation, making it available and all forms of exploitation of the work using any medium or procedure, during the term of the legal protection of the work and in every country in the world, to the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia Press.
