Effectiveness of oral health programs according to their levels of prevention, applied in educational institutions in Chiclayo and Pimentel, Peru

Introduction: The process to evaluate the effectiveness of preventive programs involves follow-up and monitoring activities, assessing if these programs really contribute to the improvement of oral health conditions of the target population. Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of oral health programs, according to their levels of prevention, applied to schoolchildren at educational institutions in Chiclayo and Pimentel, in the district of Lambayeque, Peru. Materials and Methods: A retrospective, longitudinal and descriptive study was carried out on 237 schoolchildren between 6 and 7 years of age, from four educational institutions located in Chiclayo and Pimentel. A record of the oral hygiene index and caries’ incidence was carried out in four stages, including a baseline diagnosis and three follow-up evaluations every six months between 2016 and 2017, with a previously verified calibration process for the oral hygiene index (k=0.86) and for caries registration (k=0.79). Results: A greater effectiveness was observed in programs with level 2 prevention, achieving a progressive decrease in the oral hygiene index from a baseline mean of 2.04 to 1.98 at 6 months, 1.77 at 12 months and 1.64 at 18 months, with significant differences between them. Regarding the incidence of caries in permanent first molars, no significant differences were found in the effectiveness of programs with levels 1 and 2 of prevention, according to mixed factorial ANOVA (p