FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 2000
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Robert Raible
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Fred Peterson
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Jann Ingmire
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Analysis Reveals Significant Drop in Children's Tooth Decay
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Children have significantly less tooth decay in their primary (baby) and permanent teeth today than they did in the early 1970s. This is according to the third and final installment of an analysis of national survey data in the February issue of the Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA).
The analysis reveals that among children between the ages of six and 18 years, the percentage of decayed permanent teeth decreased by 57.2 percent over a 20-year period. In addition, children between the ages of two and 10 years experienced a drop of nearly 40 percent in diseased or decayed primary teeth.
The JADA report is based on data from two National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES), conducted periodically by the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control.
"Any caries (tooth decay) in the permanent or primary [teeth] is undesirable," wrote the study's principal author, L. Jackson Brown, D.D.S., Ph.D., associate executive director, American Dental Association's (ADA) Health Policy Resource Center. "Nevertheless, we are making dramatic progress in the battle against caries in children. In the early 1990s, American children developed substantially less caries than earlier generations. This is especially true for the permanent dentition (teeth), which must last a lifetime."
However, Dr. Brown reports that for preschool-aged children (two to five) whose family income level is at or below the poverty line, carious primary teeth are treated less often than primary teeth of school-age children (six to 10) in the same economic bracket.
"This is troublesome since primary teeth in preschool-aged children must last several years, until the permanent dentition has erupted," Dr. Brown wrote. "As a nation, we need to do better at treating and preventing caries in preschool-aged children."
For more information on oral health, visit the ADA's web site at http://www.ada.org.
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