Background
The prevalence of dental caries has declined globally over the past decades but all children have not benefited from the improved oral health. Widening inequalities between social classes and certain minority ethnic groups are evident. Caries risk assessment (CRA) is an essential component in the decision-making process for the prevention and management of the disease. For individuals, background data on host factors, diet and oral hygiene are commonly merged with findings from a clinical examination while CRA in populations most often rely on epidemiological data and/or socioeconomic determinants. An increased caries risk should preferably be linked to intensified preventive and non-operative care and many such initiatives have been launched globally. However, the lack of convenient and effective tools to monitor the outcome of such health promoting activities has limited the evaluation of effectiveness. There is a need for new approaches to population-based monitoring of caries risk over time.
In a recent paper we suggested the use of geo-maps for presenting epidemiological data based on childhood caries risk in a Swedish population and we advocated this novel approach for allocation of preventive care. In order to evaluate the effect of preventive measures on childhood caries, there is a need for a method that compares repeated geo-maps. In the present communication, the geo-map concept is developed to address time trends in caries risk. We demonstrate the novel approach by analyzing and examining time trends in childhood caries risk (3–6years) based on epidemiological data from two occasions over four years in the southwest Swedish region of Halland.