Índice de severidade da cárie dentária: construção e validação

Abstract

The oral health national survey, known as "SB Brazil Project," is considered as the main oral health surveillance strategy in the production of primary data, cooperating to build a policy based on epidemiologically-orientend assistance models in Brazil. In a low caries prevalence scenario, sometimes the current indices used nowadays can reduce their discriminatory power. Objective: To create and validate a caries severity index, through an arbitrary set of scores according to dental caries and treatment needs. Methods: This study worked with data from SB Brazil 2003 and 2010 for the construction and validation of a Severity Index Dental Caries. The research is individual-based using secondary data having, as unit of analysis, the Brazilian population in the age groups of 12 years, 15-19 years and 35-44 years. The methods were divided into stages, the first was the formulation of proposals with different scores for the progression of caries through the specific assignment of scores for tooth conditions, from sound teeth to those requiring extraction, from the association between the DMFT index and Treatment Need conditions. The second step was the analysis of the coefficients of variation and the third was the construct validation. Results: There were no differences between the proposals, when the variation where analyzed. The construct validation was made considering the variables: region, type of city (capital/ non-capital), ethnic group, family income and years of schooling. It was observed that the new index could discriminate the different stages of decayed teeth. Conclusions: the study product will be useful for planning activities in public health dentistry, as it will be possible prioritizing access to the service for the group with greater severity, adding a more discriminatory power to both caries and treatment needs indexes.