Dietary habits and oral hygiene as predictors of caries in 3-year-old children.

The value of defined levels of oral hygiene and dietary habits for predicting caries was investigated. The material comprised 143 3-yr-olds. Three levels of oral hygiene and dietary habits, respectively, were used. Oral hygiene was registered as gingival status. Dietary habits were recorded by interview. Two groups were then formed by pooling stepwise the caries data for the nine possible combinations of oral hygiene and dietary habits and setting the most discriminating border, screening level, where the properties sensitivity and specificity simultaneously reached their highest value. Children with clean teeth, irrespective of dietary habits, and children with suitable dietary habits, provided they did not have general gingivitis with bleeding, might be regarded as no caries risks, while children with other combinations of oral hygiene and dietary habits were caries risks. The difference in decayed surfaces between the two groups was statistically significant (p less than 0.001). The sensitivity was 0.89 and the specificity 0.70. The predictive value of a negative test (0.91) was higher than that of a positive test (0.64).