Introduction

Dental caries is a chronic disease with a high prevalence in Spanish young children. A poor oral hygiene, inadequate dietary habits and toothaches are frequent problems in our health district based on a previous situation analysis of health. Our objective was to perform a cross-sectional descriptive study to assess the prevalence of dental caries in children aged 3 to 5 years in our health district.

Materials and methods

A dentist performed an oral and dental evaluation while a dental hygienist collected data in children enrolled in years 1, 2 and 3 of preschool. The primary outcome was the presence of caries. The data were collected in individual forms and subsequently entered in a database created with the software SPSS, which we also used to perform the descriptive analysis of the data.

Results

Of the 150 children enrolled in preschool in our health district, we assessed 121 that attended school on the day that we carried out the checkups (80.7%). We found caries in deciduous teeth in 46% of children enrolled in year 1, 40.5% of children in year 2 and 77.3% of children in year 3, and in permanent teeth in 20.8% of children in year 3.

Conclusions

The prevalence of caries was much higher in our health district compared to the previously reported nationwide prevalence. We need to increase the preventive interventions targeted to early childhood, especially in disadvantaged areas like our health district.

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