[Dental caries in 12- and 15-year-old schoolchildren from public and private schools in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, in 2001].

The aim of this paper was to assess the caries experience of 12- and 15-year-old schoolchildren from public and private schools in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, and to identify the access of children to dental services and the coverage of such services, which might be related to differences between the groups. Cross-sectional data were obtained from 3,313 clinical exams, which followed the WHO (1997) criteria for the diagnosis of dental caries. The analysis was carried out by means of the Student's t test, the chi-square test and analysis of covariance.