1980 Volume 29 Issue 4 Pages 388-397
As an index for the estimation of oral environmental condition in a population, the annual sugar consumption per head (p) has been used by Takeuchi and his group. They observed that the curve of Cx (number of teeth newly attacked by caries during the post-eruptive tooth age x-year per initial 100 teeth) in the cohort survey on one kind of tooth at the time when p was roughly constant represented the most fundamental pattern of dental caries incidence. Furthermore, ΣCx (cumulative number of carious teeth up to the post-eruptive tooth age x-year per initial 100 teeth) at the time when p has been constant at 10, 20, or 30kg, could be profitable to evaluate the condition of caries prevalence with reference to the different level of p.
The present survey aimed at obtaining caries indexes for low sugar consuming population in order to make such a graph, at the same time assisting a public dental health program in the Republic of China.
The survey was conducted in some mountain farming villages, about 500m above the sealevel, where high quality tea and bamboo are producted, in Loo-Ku Song, Nantou Hsien, at 60-70km south-south-east of Taichung, Taiwan.
Oral examinations were made once a year in September from 1971 through 1977. The project was composed of three kinds of surveys: I: cross-sectional surveys of the 1st-6th grade pupils of primary school and 1st-3rd year pupils of junior high school in 1971 and 1972: II: cohort survey of the children who entered primary school in 1971 and 1972, continuing untill 1977; and III: cross-sectional surveys of 1st-6th grade pupils of primary school and 1st-2nd year pupils of junior high school in 1976 and 1st-6th grade pupils of primary school and 1st-3rd year pupils of junior high school in 1977 (Fig. 6).
The judgement of dental caries was made by WHO criteria for dental caries. Practically insignificant level fluoride was found in the drinking water of district. A survey on snacks taken between meals was conducted in the first year and 7th year.
The results of the surveys which were done in 1971 and 1972 were as follows.
1) The total number of the examinees in 1971 and 1972 was 6, 080.
2) Caries frequency of these children was shown in Table 2.
3) Average DMF score of these children was shown in Table 3.
4) The sugar intake through snacks was tabulated in Table 5. The average annual sugar intake per child was estimated to be approximately 7kg.
