Dental health of children in Germany among the best globally

These latest figures come from the epidemiological accompanying investigations for group prophylaxis carried out on behalf of the Deutschen Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Jugendzahnpflege (DAJ), a German organisation dedicated to maintaining and promoting the oral health of children and adolescents. For the study, more than 300,000 children in the country underwent dental examinations in the 2015/2016 school year.

As part of the representative study, which the DAJ commissioned for the sixth time since 1994/1995, a dental team headed by the Greifswald paediatric dentist Prof. Christian Splieth determined the children’s oral health status in three age groups: 12-year-old pupils in the sixth grade, 6- to 7-year-old first-graders and, for the first time, 3-year-old kindergarten children. The examinations were conducted in ten federal states of Germany.

The unit of measure used to assess oral health was the dmf/DMF index. The study found a DMF score of 0.44 for the 12-year-olds studied, and 78.8 per cent of the children in this age group had a healthy dentition. Both values were the best ever achieved in Germany.

In the 6- to 7-year-old schoolchildren, however, who still mainly have primary teeth, the dmf score was 1.73. In this age group, only 53.8 per cent had a healthy dentition. This was only a slight improvement in the national average compared with the values recorded in the last DAJ study, conducted in 2010, for some federal states even had a slight deterioration. Thus, this age group was found to still have a higher caries burden than the group of 12-year-olds.

The epidemiological study found a dmf score of 0.48 for the 3-year-olds. This means that 13.7 per cent of this age group already had dental caries, while 86.3 per cent had healthy teeth. The data underpins what has already been suggested on the basis of previous regional studies and clinical experience: caries of the primary dentition occurs very early in some cases. A relatively small group of children had severe caries (3.57 dmf), which is very difficult to treat and often only under anaesthesia.

The findings show that there is social polarisation of caries already at a very early stage; however, they also suggest that the implementation of the DAJ recommendations published in 2016 for the prevention of early childhood caries for day care centres and parents was a step in the right direction and must be further expanded. The new findings will be evaluated in the coming months for further possibilities for prevention.

 

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