Quarter of a century of change: caries experience in Australian children, 1977–2002
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The establishment of the evaluation programme of the Australian School Dental Scheme has led to continuous surveillance of child oral health extending from 1977 to the present day. The aims of this study were to examine the state of child oral health in Australia in 2002 and to explore longer term trends across the quarter of a century of recorded surveillance activity. METHODS: Caries data were obtained for children who were enrolled in the School Dental Services of each state and territory for the years 1977-2002. Data collection derived from routine examinations within the School Dental Service with oral examinations carried out by dentists and dental therapists. RESULTS: There were considerable declines in caries experience between 1977 and the mid to late 1990s, with mean decayed, missing and filled deciduous teeth (dmft) for 6-year-old children decreasing from over 3 in 1977 to approximately 1.6 in 1996, and permanent 12-year-old decayed, missing and filled teeth (DMFT) decreasing from 4.8 in 1977 to 0.89 in 1998. However, since the mid to late 1990s, deciduous 6-year-old dmft has increased by 24 per cent and 12-year-old DMFT has increased by almost 15 per cent. Reductions in caries experience of those children with the most disease have also ceased, and between 1999 and 2002 an increase in the Significant Caries Index occurred. CONCLUSIONS: Improvements in the oral health of Australian children halted during the mid 1990s, after which caries experience has increased. It is important that we understand the changes taking place and their causes, so that action can be taken to halt any further possible declines in child oral health.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".