Abstract
There are several risk factors for dental caries, and the living environment is especially important.People living in Shanxi province, China, have not only special food, culture and lifestyle habits, but a significant economic gap also exists between Shanxi and the coastal areas. Dental healthcare still has not improved enough for children. We infer that oral hygiene status will be different because of these area differences. To establish a preventive system for dental caries and to provide oral hygiene instruction for the Chinese children living in Shanxi province, a total of 890 kindergarten children (boys 513, girls 377) aged 3 to 5 were screened for this study. The caries prevalence rate and the caries experience were assessed by oral examination using World Health Organization criteria. The 4 stages of dental caries were determined by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare criteria. Counting the number of teeth present, carious teeth and filled teeth, produced the following results.1.The caries prevalence rate was 69.5% in 3-year-olds, 76.0% in 4-year-olds and 80.3% in 5-yearolds. There was a trend to increase with age.2.Mean diseased, missing and filled teeth of 3-year-olds was 3.2, 3.8 in 4-year-olds and 4.7 in 5-year-olds. This trend also increased with age.3.Of children aged 3, 66.9% had untreated teeth, while for children aged 4 and 5 percentages were 68.6% and 71.1%, respectively. At each age group, many carious teeth had been left untreated.Compared with Japan, there were higher caries prevalence rates and a higher average number of carious teeth of each child in Shanxi, China. Furthermore, the results indicated that the percentage of filled teeth remains very low, and many carious teeth of the primary dentition had been left untreated.
