Evidence of downward trends in dental caries in Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract

DATA SOURCES:Medline, Popline, ExtraMed, Embase and Info Latino Americo were searched for the period 1 January 1970-31 December 2000. Keywords used were“dental caries”and names of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Reference lists from retrieved articles were also examined for more studies. STUDY SELECTION:For inclusion an article had to have clearly-defined ages within the groups (5-6, 11-13 years); use the World Health Organization caries diagnostic criteria; the sample had to be reasonably representative of the general population and contain at least 30 individuals; and examiners had to be calibrated. DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS:For each of the two age-groupings, the caries prevalence and caries severity data were plotted against the year of study. A nonlinear regression curve was fitted to each group of results, and a linear regression analysis was done to look for a significant departure from zero of the caries-rate trend with statistical significance set at P<0.05. This was done separately for the 21 countries in Latin America and 12 countries in the Caribbean. RESULTS:The search identified 438 articles: 172 were epidemiological studies, of which 30 fulfilled the inclusion criteria. A total of 16 countries were represented. Over the last 30 years, there has been a significant decrease in caries prevalence for 11-13-year-old children in Latin America. There was also a significant decrease in caries severity for 5-6-year-olds in Latin America, and for 11-13-year-olds in Latin America and the Caribbean. CONCLUSIONS:This study showed some statistically significant downward trends in dental caries between 1970 and 2000 in 16 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.Evidence-Based Dentistry (2004) 5, 68. doi:10.1038/sj.ebd.6400279 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]