Prevalence of early childhood caries among 5 ‐year‐old children: A systematic review

AbstractThe aim of the present review was to describe the updated prevalence of early childhood caries (ECC) among 5 ‐year‐old children globally. Two independent reviewers performed a systematic literature search to identify English publications from January 2013 to December 2017 using MEDLINE, ISI Web of Science, and Scopus. Search MeSH key words were “dental caries” and “child, preschool”. The inclus ion criteria were epidemiological surveys reporting the caries status of 5‐year‐old children with the decayed, missing, and filled primary teeth (dmft) index. The quality of the publications was evaluated with the modified Newcastle‐Ottawa Scale. Among the 2410 identified publications, 37 arti cles of moderate or good quality were included. Twenty of the included studies were conducted in Asia (China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Nepal, and Thailand), seven in Europe (Greece, Germany, Great Britain, and Italy), six in South America (Brazil), two in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia and Turkey), o ne in Oceania (Australia), and one in Africa (Sudan). The prevalence of ECC ranged from 23% to 90%, and most of them (26/37) were higher than 50%. The mean dmft score varied from 0.9 to 7.5. Based on the included studies published in the recent 5 years, there is a wide variation of ECC prevalence a cross countries, and ECC remains prevalent in most countries worldwide.
Source: Journal of Investigative and Clinical Dentistry - Category: Dentistry Authors: Tags: REVIEW ARTICLE Source Type: research