Evaluation of the World Health Organisation pathfinder methodology for oral health surveys in industrialised countries.

The aim of this study was to carry out a survey using the pathfinder methodology developed by the World Health Organisation for international surveys and to compare the results (DMFT, DT, MT, FT) with those obtained from a national survey in France. The statistically significant difference observed between the results of the DMFT and DT indices obtained by using the two methods does not affect the classification of France at the 'moderate' level on the World Health Organisation scale for caries prevalence at the age of 12 years. The observed DMFT difference is an argument in favour of using the World Health Organisation pathfinder methodology, as it provides a satisfactory degree of precision on the oral health status of a population for planning purposes.