Comprehensive review of caries assessment systems developed over the last decade

Resumo

World Health Organization (WHO) in the year 2007
recognized the growing burden of oral diseases worldwide and
emphasized the need to scale up action based on comprehensive
data collection systems. In view of the global epidemic of untreated
caries in children there is an urgent need to establish a scoring
system that both assesses and quantifies various advanced stages of
caries. Furthermore, the available data are not readily comparable
due to the different scoring systems used. The DMF index despite
having limitations has been widely utilized in oral epidemiological
surveys. It is recommended by the WHO for measuring and comparing
the experience of dental caries in populations. The path of future
research in caries epidemiology will depend on finding an ideal
caries index. Objective: This review is prepared to present and
critically evaluate various new caries assessment systems that have
been developed in the last decade. Literature review: A literature
search was done to find out major caries assessment systems
developed over last decade, it revealed there were five new indices
developed to assess caries. These indices were critically evaluated
to list their strengths and limitations. Conclusion: There are many
promising new caries indices purposed, but still there is a need for
further studies to evaluate their validity and reliability before they
can replace DMFT index.