ORAL HEALTH IN PRESCHOOL-CHILDREN LIVING IN SWEDEN .2. A LONGITUDINAL-STUDY - FINDINGS AT 3 YEARS OF AGE

Scientific epidemiological studies of dental health in children three years of age are relatively few in Sweden. The aim of this study was to describe the oral health of three-year-old children living in Sweden, with special reference to immigration and failure to attend health examinations. All of 671 children requested to take part in an earlier investigation (Wendt et al. 1991) were invited for a new dental examination at three years of age. A total of 632 children were examined. At the age of three years 71.7 per cent of the children were caries free. Of the children with caries, 33.5 per cent were immigrants and of the total number of immigrants, 50.5 per cent had caries compared to 21.9 per cent of the non-immigrant children. Among those children, who failed to attend the earlier investigations at one or two years of age, 61.5 per cent had caries at the age of three. Compared to studies on dental health in three-year-old children from the 70's and 80's (Hugoson et al. 1986), this study shows that dental health in three-year-old children has not improved significantly during the last decade. Furthermore, this study supports the suggestion that special preventive dental programmes should be developed for immigrant children and that extra attention should be paid to children who fail to attend health examinations and their families.