The influences on preventive care provided to children who frequently attend the UK General Dental Service.

OBJECTIVES: To identify the relationship between the preventive and restorative care provided to children who frequently attend the General Dental Service in the UK after taking into account socio-economic status, gender and dental caries experience.

SETTING: General dental practices in the North West of England.

SUBJECTS AND MATERIALS: The study design involved a retrospective investigation of case notes of 677 children who regularly attended 50 general dental practitioners. The complete history of the dental care received by each child during the primary dentition period was recorded. Analyses took place at the patient level. Information was recorded on the total number of carious teeth and restorative and preventive care provided to the children. Preventive care was categorised as dietary advice, oral hygiene instruction, prescription of fluoride tablets and application of fluoride varnish. Socio-economic status was measured using the Townsend score of the electoral ward of residence of each subject. Logistic regression models, taking into account the clustering of the subjects within dental practices were fitted to identify whether or not socio-economic status was significantly associated with provision of each category of preventive care, after controlling for gender, the total number of teeth affected by caries and the proportion of carious teeth which were restored.

RESULTS: Children from poorer backgrounds were significantly more likely to receive oral hygiene instruction than their more affluent peers. Socio-economic status did not influence dentists' decisions to prescribe fluoride tablets, but children from affluent backgrounds were significantly more likely to have fluoride varnish applied to their teeth than children from deprived backgrounds after controlling for other factors. The more teeth affected by decay significantly increased the odds of giving dietary advice, prescription of fluoride tablets and application of fluoride varnish, but had no effect on whether or not oral hygiene instruction was given. As the percentage of decayed but filled teeth decreased the odds of giving dietary advice or applying fluoride varnish increased significantly. Conclusion It would appear that dentists are providing appropriate preventive care according to the aetiological causes of dental disease. They also look to be providing preventive care in compensation for decisions not to restore carious primary teeth. However the preventive care provided seems to be reactive to disease patterns, and in this high risk group of patients does not seem to be particularly effective.