Association between ICDAS Scores in Primary and Permanent Teeth

Dental caries in primary dentition is a risk factor for caries of the permanent teeth. Objective: This study aimed to determine the association between ICDAS scores in the primary teeth and permanent ones among the schoolchildren. Methods: The male children (122) aged 12-13 years with positive informed consent were clinically examined in a mobile dental clinic with a standard spot light. One examiner (EH) with an experience on ICDAS method conducted all the examinations. The intra-examiner reproducibility was high (kappa>0.9). Results: The mean number of enamel caries surfaces was 0.14 (SD=0.5) and dentinal caries surfaces 0.90 (3.0) in the primary teeth. The respective means were 2.12 (2.5) and 1.07 (3.0) in the permanent teeth. The mean number of surfaces with the different ICDAS scores in primary teeth were: 0.3 for code 1, 1.1 for code 2, 0.7 for code 3, 0.6 for code 4, 0.3 for code 5, and 0.3 for code 6, and in permanent teeth: 0.0 – 1, 0.1 – 2, 0.0 – 3, 0.1 – 4, 0.2 – 5, and 0.5 – 6. The correlations between the mean numbers of enamel and dentinal caries surfaces between the primary and the permanent teeth were very low. The only statistically significant correlation (r=0.37) was between the number of enamel and dentinal caries lesions in the permanent dentition. Conclusions: The mean ICDAS score of the primary teeth does not correlate with the ICDAS score of the permanent teeth, but number of enamel caries surfaces has high correlation with the number of dentine caries surfaces in the permanent teeth. Acknowledgements: This study was funded by Kuwait University grants DD02/10, GM02/05, GD01/11.