The use of index teeth vs. full mouth in erosive tooth wear to assess risk factors in the diet: A cross-sectional epidemiological study

To assess common dietary erosive-tooth-wear (ETW) risk in university students from an exotic-fruit country comparing index teeth vs. full mouth ETW assessment. A risk factors’ questionnaire was applied on 601 18–25 years old subjects in Bogotá-Colombia. Trained examiners assessed clinically: ETW (BEWE) on all buccal, occlusal and lingual surfaces and ICDAS caries experience (ICDAS-DMFS). Full-arch and index-teeth (buccal of upper-central incisors and occlusal of lower-first molars) maximum-BEWE score categorized patients into: with- (2–3) and without wear (0–1). These were compared in terms of demographic, clinical, dietary and other factors with crude and logistic regression models. Students’ mean age was 20.0 ± 1.9 (77.7% females). Most consumed fruits were erosive/extremely erosive (57%). Prevalence of wear was 73% (full-mouth) vs. 19.6% (index-teeth). Full-mouth-BEWE correlated significantly with teeth-index-BEWE score but low (0.31, p