Caries risk assessment programmes for Hong Kong children.

The prevalence of dental caries (tooth decay) in early childhood is high. Early childhood caries (ECC) is associated with caries in permanent dentition and lethal systemic infections. In many developed countries, 25% of children bear 75-80% of caries lesions. Caries prevention should be targeted at high-risk individuals. Identifying high-risk preschoolers through caries risk assessment (CRA) is of great importance for caries control and cost control. The CRA should also be an integral part of diagnosis and treatment planning to optimise clinical outcomes. Several CRA programmes have been developed for pre-schoolers, including the Caries-risk Assessment Tool (CAT),1 the Caries Management by Risk Assessment (CAMBRA),2 the Cariogram,3 and the NUS-CRA biopsychosocial models.4 This study aimed to compare the accuracy of various CRA programmes in predicting the caries risk among Hong Kong pre-schoolers.