Resumo

DOMINGOS, Patrícia Aleixo dos Santos et al. Epidemiological aspects of children's oral health in a Brazilian city. Arq. Odontol. [online]. 2010, vol.46, n.2, pp. 82-87. ISSN 1516-0939.

The Health Sciences, prior to the planning of prevention programs, adopt the tools to analyze the population profile, entitled epidemiological surveys, to obtain data on the need for heathcare and the possibility of treating health events. The aim of this study was to evaluate dental conditions in schoolchildren, aged five to fourteen, enrolled in public schools in Américo Brasiliense, SP Brazil. The dmft and DMFT index, caries experience, and prevalence of fluorosis were analyzed. For this epidemiological study, 1,137 children were selected. Four calibrated dentists performed oral exams according to WHO criteria (1997). The data were collected using descriptive analyses. The results showed that 94% of the five-year-old children were caries free, and the value of dmft was 1.44. DMFT was 1.19 in 12-year-olds. The lowest and the highest fluorosis prevalence could be observed in eight and fourteen-year-olds, respectively. It could be concluded that the city of Américo Brasiliense has developed respectful educational and preventive oral health programs which presented satiosfactory results in the present epidemiological study.

Palavras-chave : Health profile; Dental caries; DMF index.