Caries Risk Assessment and Referral Tool (CRA-RT)-A novel risk scoring system for early childhood caries in community settings.

Objective: To develop a brief and simple, easy-to-administer, culturally sensitive, reliable and valid risk scoring system for early childhood caries based only on behavioural and other nonclinical risk factors. The purpose was to allow risk scoring by child care providers without clinical examination in order to guide dental referral in a community setting.

Methods: A cross-sectional study using stratified multistage cluster sampling was conducted among 559 preschool children and their mothers in Anganwadi centres and Preprimary schools in Thiruvananthapuram district, Kerala, India.