Prevalence of incipient radiographic periodontal lesions in relation to ethnic background and dental care provisions in young adults.

The prevalence of early periodontal destruction was assessed in a group of 516 14-year-old Iraqi schoolchildren who had not been offered public dental care programmes. Vertical bone loss adjacent to the proximal surfaces of first molars was used to indicate an incpient periodontal lesion, and the prevalence of subjects diagnosed as having one or more sites with this criterion in the Iraqi group was compared with those of 2 Scandinavian populations of the same age. These comprised 241 Norwegians who had received regular dental care and 561 Danes with or without such programmes. In the Iraqi group, 11.5% showed 1 or more sites with radiographic bone loss. However, few sites exhibited deep defects. There were significantly fewer Norwegian teenagers showing early periodontal lesions as compared to the Iraqi group (p less than 0.01) and the Danish subjects with no school dental programmes (p less than 0.01). Danish teenagers receiving regular dental care did not differ from the Norwegian group. It was concluded that the criterion used in the present study seems suitable for detecting differences in the prevalence of incipient radiographic periodontal lesions among young populations, and that the utilization of public dental care services may be an important factor in explaining such differences.