Dental caries. A meta analysis on a Saudi population

OBJECTIVE: To determine the prevalence of caries in the primary and permanent teeth in a Saudi population.

METHODS: This study was conducted at the College of Dentistry, University of Dammam, Dammam, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In June 2010, a literature search was started and found all studies conducted in Saudi Arabia on dental caries from 1999 to 2008. Sixty articles were found on PubMed, which had been published during the considered time period. Sixteen studies were passed through inclusion criteria and included in analysis. A 2 to 12-year-old Saudi population was included to determine the prevalence of caries in primary teeth, and for permanent teeth, the age range was 6-18 years.

RESULTS: The prevalence of caries in primary and permanent teeth were analyzed separately. Forest plot and Chi-square test revealed considerable heterogeneity. A random effect model was used to find caries prevalence in primary and permanent teeth. The mean decayed, missing, and filled teeth (dmft) was 5.38 (95% CI: 4.314 - 6.436), and in the permanent teeth the DMFT was 3.34 (95% CI: 1.97 - 4.75). Publication bias diagnostics suggested possible overestimation of caries prevalence in permanent teeth but not in primary teeth.

CONCLUSION: The results in this study present a high decayed, missing, and filled teeth score in the adult and young population of Saudi Arabia, however, more published data is required as the results obtained from this meta analysis may not give a true picture, and reality may be worse.