Unstimulated Salivary Flow And Salivary Ph An Indicator Of Dental Caries In Pediatric Population.

Introduction: A healthy mouth is the gateway to a healthy body. Oral health is an integral component of the overall health and well-being and dental caries is probably the commonest chronic disease in the world (Levine 2011)1. Worldwide, 60-90% of school children and nearly 100% of adults have dental cavities, often leading to pain and discomfort. (WHO, April 2012)2. Unfortunately, many children are afflicted with dental caries at an early age. According to the National Health Survey3 conducted nationwide in 2004 in India, the percentage prevalence of dental caries were found to be 51.9% in 5 year old, 53.8% in 12 year old and 63.1% in 15 year old children. AIM: To analyse the possibility of early detection of caries prone children from their rate of flow of unstimulated saliva and salivary pH. DMF: For children over 7 (seven) years and upto 11 or 12 the decayed, missing and filled primary molars and canines have been used to determine a dmft or dmfs when the surfaces are counted. A primary molar or canine is presumed missing because of dental caries when it is missing before the normal exfoliation time. III. dft and dfs: Description: In the deft and defs as described, both 'd' and 'e' are used to describe teeth with dental caries. Because of that 'd' and 'e' are sometimes combined and the index becomes the dft and dfs. Teeth not counted: 1) Missing teeth including unerupted and congenitally missing. 2) Supernumerary teeth 3) Teeth restored for reasons other than dental caries are not counted as f. Over 7,187 DMF index publications included in PubMed (Larmas M, 2010)102. underlines its leading role in the present epidemiological caries research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]