The effectiveness of fissure sealing in preventing dental caries in a subject-specific fashion was studied in order to forge a link between the controlled trials and knowledge creation in clinical practice.
The subjects were divided retrospectively into three categories according to the sealant treatment status of their first permanent molars at the first examination after the eruption and the survival of first molars in each group were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method.
Sealing of all first molars in caries-prone subjects was an effective caries preventive method. The highest survival of first molars was observed in the unsealed subjects in the health center focusing on sealing risk-subjects only. The first molars of partly sealed subjects had the lowest probability of survival in both health centers.
Sealing all four permanent first molars rather than some of them in high caries risk subjects and leaving unsealed the first molars of caries resistant subjects enable to decrease unnecessary sealant treatment by focusing it especially to those benefiting it.
Paediatric restorative dentistry continues being a challenge in everyday clinical practice. Practise-based survival analysis covering entire age cohorts offer an epidemiological approach to this issue in studying survival of restorations in primary teeth. The aim of this study was to compare survival of restorations in primary molars in 1985, 1990, 1995 and 2000 age cohorts associated with some population-related factors.
Data from dental records of the entire cohorts were obtained from the Health Centre of Kemi, Finland covering the period 1989-2009. The longevity of the restorations was illustrated using the Kaplan-Meier survival curves and tested with log-rank test and Cox proportional hazards regression analysis. The retrospective caries risk definition for individuals was based on the early restorations in the first permanent molars.
Total number of the placed restorations was 2755. Survival of the restorations was the shortest in the 1995 cohort and the longest in the 1985 cohort (p
