Epidemiologic characteristics of dental caries: relation of DMFT and DMFS to proportion of children with DMF teeth.
The relation of the age-specific mean DMFT and mean DMFS to the age-specific proportion of children with DMF teeth has been studied using the original data of Knutson and data of a recent Finnish material. When studying the relationship between the mean DMFT (x) and the proportion of children with DMF teeth (y), three models of regression were compared. For low caries populations, a specific correction exponential curve y = 1-abx seemed to fit caries data somewhat better than the other models. The relationship between the mean DMFS (x) and the proportion of children with DMF teeth (y) could be expressed by a curvilinear model y = e[b(lnx) + a]; this applied to low caries populations (y approximately less than 0.7) as well, but the unexplained residual variation was about 6%.
D002648:Child; D004245:DMF Index; D003731:Dental Caries / Q000453:epidemiology*; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical