Surveillance of primary dentition caries in Germiston, South Africa, 1981-97.

Abstract

This 17-year-long study examined trends of dental caries rates in the primary dentition of 6843 preschool children in a South African city. Calibrated dentists did repeated cross-sectional epidemiological surveys of dental caries in 2- to 5-year-old nursery school children using WHO diagnostic criteria between 1981 and 1997. Both the percentage of children with dmft>0 and mean dmft increased between 1981 and 1989 and have slowly declined ever since in the absence of organised prevention to produce a secular trend of decreasing caries rates. The dt/dmft percentage ranged between 60% and 100% except in 1991 when it dropped to 40% and the ft/dmft percentage component rose proportionally, probably due to an economic effect. The percentage of children with dmft>0 and mean dmft decreased over the study period at all ages, the reason for which is unknown but is speculated to be due to a change in mutans streptococci strains.