Bilateral occurrence of dental caries and oral hygiene in preschool children of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

The objective of the study was to determine bilateral caries occurrence or caries bilaterality in preschool children of Riyadh. For this purpose, 789 randomly selected preschool children, 379 (48%) boys and 410 (52%) girls, were examined for dental caries utilizing the World Health Organization (WHO) criteria for diagnosis of dental caries. Caries were significantly bilateral (p < .05) in all the teeth. Among the posterior teeth, mandibular second molars showed the highest caries bilaterality (88%) and among the anterior teeth, maxillary central incisors had the highest caries bilaterality (88.9%). Mandibular canines had the lowest caries bilaterality (52.7%). There was more than 50% probability of left side tooth being carious given that right side tooth was carious for all the teeth. Amongst posterior teeth, the conditional probability for bilateral caries occurrence was highest in mandibular second molars (.88) and amongst the anterior teeth, maxillary central incisors had the highest conditional bilaterality (.89). Caries bilaterality was significantly high (p < .05) in children with poor and fair oral hygiene as compared to children with good oral hygiene for all the molars and maxillary central incisors. It can be concluded that bilateral caries occurrence or caries bilaterality is highly prevalent in all the primary teeth; especially in mandibular molars and maxillary incisors.