PREVALENCE OF DENTAL CARIES IN SCHOOLCHILDREN IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR OF SANTIAGO DE CALI 2010

Abstract

Introduction: According to the World Health
Organization (WHO), dental caries is the main oral
problem in industrialized countries, affecting between
60 and 90% of the school population and a large
majority of adults. Objective: To determine the
prevalence of caries school children of public
institutions in Cali during 2010. Methods: Descriptive
study. We used the methodology suggested by WHO
for these studies with multietapic sampling, which
combines the cluster method and systematic sampling.
The authors examined 697 children from 5 to 12 years
of the 42 selected educational institutions. A database
was made in Excel software and data were analyzed
with Stata statistical software version 10.0 to obtain
percentages and means of variables. Results: The
prevalence of cavitational caries is 22%, DMF-T index
was 1.65 at age 12. Conclusions: The value of 1.65 for
DMF index for children at the age of 12 years is below
the 2.3 value previously established by the National
Public Health Plan for the period 2007-2010. Caries
prevalence decreased from 67% to 22%. This
information is representative for school children of
public educational system in the municipality of Cali,
but does not represent the entire population of children
of ages for 5 to 12 years of Santiago de Cali.