Saliva tests in the prognosis of caries in children.

The purpose of the investigation was to find out whether the negative correlations between caries indices and the flow rate, pH and buffer effect of saliva that could be demonstrated in groups of 8- and 5-year-old children, were close enough to allow prediction of the development of caries in a given child. The results showed that the range of variation of the results of all analyses were very wide. This makes the use of saliva tests alone in the prognosis of caries development of less value in the individual child.