Strategic Planning: Establishing Need and Clarifying Motivation

Background: During the past decades, the prevalence of caries disease in the population of Western industrialized countries has decreased markedly. In children also, a reduction of dental caries experience has been reported by many authors. The aim of this paper was to evaluate the trend of dental caries prevalence in 12-year-old children living in the city of Sassari, (Italy), by five cross-sectional studies conducted in 1989, 1992, 1995, 1998 and 2004. Methods: In all cohorts, dental caries (DMFT and SiC Index according to WHO indications), was measured. For each variable measured (DMFT and sub-indices, SiC Index), differences in proportions among the five cohorts during the fifteen years were tested using χ2-square test. Results: The mean DMFT index decreased from 4.3 ± 3.1 in 1989 to 0.8 ± 1.5 in 2004. The prevalence of untreated caries (DT) had a notable decrease between 1992 and 1995, increased slightly between 1995 and 1998 and had the greatest decrease in 2004. The number of filled teeth remains low. The percentage of caries-free children increased from 10% to 64%, whereas the percentage of untreated caries changed from 44% in 1989 to 62% in 2004. SiC Index decreased from 7.8 in 1989 to 3.9 in 2004. Conclusion: On the basis of the results of DMFT and SiC Index, caries experience has been reduced. The vigilance and the promotion of a higher standard of personal oral hygiene and dental check-ups are necessary to obtain an improvement of oral status in the future adult population and to reach the new WHO global goals. Background Dental caries remains the single most common disease of childhood that is not self-limiting or tractable with antibiotics. During a relatively short period of time (about twenty-five years), dental caries has undergone to a striking reduction in most industrialized countries [1,2]. Many factors played a role in this decrease. Most authors agree that the widespread use of fluoride in the toothpaste is the main reason for this decrease [3,4]. Preventive programs and changes in the restorative dental treatment approach are reported as important factors, too [5-7]. However, the real contribution of health services in the improvement of Published: 1 March 2007 BMC Public Health 2007, 7:28 doi:10.1186/1471-2458-7-28 Received: 4 October 2006 Accepted: 1 March 2007 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/7/28 © 2007 Campus et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.