The goal of this study was to identify dental caries prevalence and severity among all 12 and 13-year-old schoolchildren enrolled in a public school in 2002 and to establish comparisons with the results of studies conducted previously in the same school in 1971 and 1997. A cross-sectional study involving 181 children was performed. Clinical data were collected by one examiner under World Health Organization (WHO) ¹ criteria. The examiner had been through calibration training. The project was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Federal University in Santa Catarina. The response rate was 93.8%. Intra-examiner agreement, on a tooth-by-tooth basis, was high (Kappa > 0.73). The prevalence rates for dental caries were 98%, 93.7% or 80.0%, and 57.4% in 1971, 1997, and 2002, respectively. The mean DMF-T index was 9.2 in 1971, 6.2 or 3.0 in 1997, and 1.4 in 2002, taking both ages as a whole. The first value from 1997 was recorded under the Klein & Palmer² diagnostic criterion and the second according to the WHO ³ criterion. Between 1971 and 2002 there was a real reduction in caries prevalence and severity among the schoolchildren, even though different diagnostic criteria were used.
Dental Caries; DMF Index; Oral Health
