Children's dental health in Europe.

"Children's Dental Health in Europe" is a collaborative study of a total of 3200 children, comprising samples of 5- and 12-year-old children from eight EU-countries [Belgium, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Scotland (United Kingdom), Spain and Sweden] who have undergone clinical examination by well calibrated dentists. This study analyses the influence of a number of sociodemographic factors on the dental health of the actual children. Father's and/or mother's occupational status was used to determine the social class of the family, after construction of a family-social class variable, SocFam, and the accuracy of this variable was tested. In 15 of the 16 samples, both treatment provided and unmet treatment need were higher in children from low social class. The treatment need in children from low social class was significantly greater in the Belgium, German, Greek and Italian 5-year-old samples. The differences in both treatment need and treatment already received for children from high respectively low social class were significant in the Scottish and Spanish 12-year-old samples. Taking into account the total material of 1600 children in each age-group, risk indicators for caries, identified by logistic and multiple regression analyses, were social class of the family, the mother's smoking habits, and in the 5-year-olds the number of siblings.