Teething pattern and prevalence of dental caries.

A cross-sectional study was conducted on the children of 146 randomly selected families in Abha, Saudi Arabia. Counting of teeth and examination for caries teeth of children under 12 years of age were done by family visits. The results showed that no child developed teeth before 5 months. By 12 months there were on an average 3.3 teeth erupted per child, and by three years 18.8 teeth. At 12 years of age there were 24.4 teeth per child as compared to 28 in other countries. The DMF (decayed, missing and filled) index of children increased from 1.8 at the age of 4 to 5.1 at 7 and 5.2 at 10 years of age. The rate of caries teeth was higher than that in Australia, Great Britain, USA, India, China and Sudan. Further investigations on causes of high rate of caries teeth are recommended.