Objective:

To compare the prevalence of dental cavity and treatment needs according to International Cavity Detection and Assessment System (ICDAS) and DMF, in 7-8 years old children of rural public school centers belonging to 16 municipal towns of El Salvador.

Materials and methods:

The design corresponds to a transversal descriptive epidemiological investigation made from clinical histories of 7-8 year- old schoolchildren in rural areas of El Salvador; the diagnosis of dental cavities was established based on ICDAS criteria. The variables analyzed were: caries prevalence and treatment needs. The DMF-T/ dmf-t was established, excluding the precavitation phases of the disease, Student's T was used to test the differences of the means between indexes and the Levene test to evaluate the equality of the variances. The statistical significance was set at p <0.05.

Results:

According to ICDAS, each child presented an average of 9.52 teeth affected by caries and, according to DMF, 6.24. The difference found between indexes is significant in permanent teeth and in primary teeth (p<0,05). Diagnoses according to ICDAS criteria, generated 4269 needs for curative treatments and 4475 preventive ones; while with DMF, 2997 curative treatments and no preventive ones.

Conclusions:

ICDAS reflected a higher affectation by dental cavities when considering the precavitation stages; therefore, it allows establishing a diversity of preventive treatments and damage limitation; which, mostly, it is not possible to indicate with DMF.

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