Caries Risk Assessment for Children in South-Western China

Caries risk assessment (CRA) has been used to identify the high-risk individuals for effective caries prevention and intervention. Objectives: to profile the caries prevalence/incidence and risk factors among Chinese children in rural China and to develop and validate new CRA models. Methods: For baseline assessment, 232 subjects were recruited (4 ~ 7 years old) from a kindergarten. All participants were required to complete a questionnaire survey with assistance from school teachers and subsequently went through a series of clinical examinations and salivary tests. A one-year follow up was carried out on 128 (55.2%) subjects repeating the abovementioned procedures. Thereafter, the data collected were analyzed using SPSS®. New CRA models were constructed and the validity was compared against that of Cariogram. Results: About 87.1% children had at least one carious lesion at baseline. Within 1 year, 38.1% children developed new caries lesions. The mean number of newly affected surfaces & teeth were 1.75±0.282 & 0.87±0.139 in the entire cohort and 4.38±0.570 & 2.13±0.279 among children developing new lesions. For 1-year caries increment, “development of new lesions (dichotomous, yes/no)” was associated with “gender” (p=0.006), “age” (p=0.011), “score of diet content” (p=0.096), “score of plaque amount” (p=0.008), “score of saliva rate” (p=0.001) and “score of past caries” (p=0.060). “Number of new affected surface” was associated with “gender” (p=0.060), “age” (<0.001), “score of diet content” (p=0.085), “score of plaque amount” (p=0.001) and “score of saliva rate” (p=0.037). One new CRA model established in this study demonstrated promising specificity and sensitivity of 74.4% and 82.6%, respectively.

Conclusions: An accurate CRA model can be established locally for early detection/selection of ethnic Chinese preschoolers with high caries risk.