Oral Health and Occurrence of Salivary S. mutans in Small Children

A clinical study was carried out on 155 children from Erfurt, Germany, aged in average 30 months to analyse their oral health status (dmft, initial caries lesions, gingivitis, dento-facial anomalies). Salivary tests Dentocult® SM strip mutans were also carried out. For statistical analyses the SAS package with a confidence interval of 95% was used. 83.2% of the subjects were caries free. The caries prevalence was recorded at a value of 0.58 dmft. In 13% of the subjects initial caries was recorded. In more than one third of the children gingivitis was found, with a significantly higher frequency in boys than in girls. The most frequent dento-facial anomaly was the open bite (42%). Whereas in two third of the children no S. mutans was detected in saliva, 24% of children showed even high numbers. A correlation was found between the caries prevalence and the salivary counts of S. mutans. It could be concluded that oral health shows still deficits, expressed by early development of dentinal caries and a relatively high frequency of initial caries lesions. Keywords: early childhood caries, salivary test, s. mutans, oral health status