[Oral health of schoolchildren residing in areas with or without water fluoridation in Sorocaba, São Paulo State, Brazil].

This study describes dental caries data and fluorosis in seven municipalities in the Sorocaba region, S o Paulo State, Brazil, comparing those with fluoridated as opposed to non-fluoridated water. Criteria were those proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO, 1997), adapted by the School of Public Health, University of S o Paulo. The sample was selected at random, without replacement, and was calculated by age, accepting a design error of 2 and a sampling loss of 20% (n = 96 per age). There were six trained examiners, with accepted agreement percentage above 89% for all variables. In the Sorocaba region, the dmft index in 5 year-old children was 3.1, and 37.6% were caries-free (DMFT = 0). At age 12, 32.3% were caries-free (DMFT = 0), and the DMFT index in the region was 2.6, thus characterizing the area as having a low prevalence of caries. In areas with fluoridated water, the proportion of caries-free children at 12 years was higher than in those without fluoridated water (p = 0.019), and the DMFT was lower (p = 0.001). Prevalence of fluorosis at age 12 was 12.7% in the Sorocaba area and did not pose a public health problem according to the community fluorosis index (CFI).