[The prevalence of dental caries in primary dentition and the risk factors of 5-year-old children in Northeast of China].

Purpose: To study the prevalence of dental caries in primary dentition of 5-year-old children in Northeast of China, and assess the risk factors for dental caries.

Methods: The representative samples were selected by multi-stage, stratified and random sampling from the three provinces of Northeast of China. Dental caries of 2353 children at five-year age were recorded according to WHO criteria. The questionnaire were finished by 1191 parents of the children and analyzed with X(2) test and logistic regression using SPSS 12.0 software package.

Results: The prevalence of dental caries in 5-year-old children was 75.82% and dmft was 4.63. The lowest caries prevalence was noted in Heilongjiang province. The important predictors of dental caries were the educational level of parents (P<0.001) and eating sweet food before sleep (P=0.006).

Conclusions: To reduce the dental caries in primary dentition, oral health education for the parents should be emphasized and sugar-intake before sleeping should be controlled.