Reductions in dental decay in 3-year old children in Greater Glasgow and Clyde: repeated population inspection studies over four years

Abstract

BackgroundDental decay remains one of the world's most prevalent diseases in childhood. It is unfortunate that the proportion of children suffering from oral disease is so high, given that dental decay is almost entirely preventable. The objective of this study was to examine dental inspection data from three-year old children to assess the extent to which the dental health in Greater Glasgow and Clyde had improved during the initial years of the Childsmile intervention programme.MethodsDental inspections of three-year old children in Greater Glasgow and Clyde were undertaken in the academic years of 2006/7 and 2007/8 (the baseline years), and again in 2008/9 and 2009/10 (after the intervention had begun). A standardised protocol suitable for the age group was used. The number of decayed, missing and filled teeth was calculated (ie d3mft). If d3mft was > 0 then a child was said to have 'obvious decay experience' into the dentine. Additional results examined the effect of socioeconomic status using the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD).ResultsWe inspected 10022 children (19% of the population). The weighted percentage of children with decay experience was 26% in 2006/7, 25% (2007/8), reducing to 18% (2007/8) and 17% (2009/10). When compared to the first baseline year of 2006/7, the OR was 0.91 for 2007/8 (0.79-1.06, p = 0.221), 0.63 for 2008/9 (0.55-0.72, p < 0.001), and 0.50 for 2009/10 (0.43-0.58, p < 0.001). The weighted mean d3mft was 1.1 in 2006/7, 1.0 in 2007/8 (p = 0.869), 0.6 in 2008/9 (p < 0.001) and 0.4 in 2009/10 (p < 0.001). Reductions in decay were seen in all socioeconomic groups.ConclusionsThis study demonstrates that it is possible to impact upon the prevalence and morbidity of dental decay across the socioeconomic spectrum in a population. The dental health of young children in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde area has improved in recent years.

A randomised controlled trial to measure the effects and costs of a dental caries prevention regime for young children attending primary care dental services: the Northern Ireland Caries Prevention In Practice (NIC-PIP) trial

“…It is an evaluation programme, which has largely been confined to assessment of process. 70 Serial cross-sectional studies 71 in Glasgow, an early adopter of the Childsmile programme, show reductions in dental caries in 3-year-old children, but without a control population causal inference is difficult and no data have been published on the cost-effectiveness of the programme.…”

Multilevel Analysis of Dental Caries in Swedish Children and Adolescents in Relation to Socioeconomic Status

“…Most of these indices are area-based; that is, they take contextual characteristics into account and are based, e.g., on income, education, employment status, social class, housing, access to service, car ownership and cultural needs [Townsend, 1987;Carstairs and Morris, 1989;Malmström et al, 1998]. Such area-based indices have been used and found to be related also to dental health [McMahon et al, 2011;Östberg et al, 2017a]. Single-item variables based on information from individuals have been combined into indices; however, less is known about their usefulness in dentistry [Havard et al, 2008;André Kramer et al, 2018].…”

Recruitment and participation in pre-school and school-based fluoride varnish pilots – the South Central experience

“…There have been significant improvements to child oral health in Scotland 1 that may be primarily due to the establishment of supervised toothbrushing programmes nationally, but even these have seen a falloff after the first year at primary school. 12 By the end of the 2008-2009 school year 95% of all Scottish nursery schools attended by 97,000 three to five-year-olds were participating in supervised toothbrushing, however, this participation rate decreased in P1 and P2. 13 The Childsmile programme is currently being evaluated and it will be interesting to see if the trajectory of oral health improvement achieved is sustainable in the long-term.…”