Preventive care delivered within Public Dental Service after caries risk assessment of young adults

Objectives To study preventive care provided to young adults in relation to their estimated risk category over a 3‐year period. Methods The amount and type of preventive treatment during 3 years was extracted from the digital dental records of 982 patients attending eight public dental clinics. The baseline caries risk assessment was carried out by the patient's regular team in four classes according to a predetermined model, and the team was responsible for all treatment decisions. Based on the variables ‘oral health information’, ‘additional fluoride’ and ‘professional tooth cleaning’, a cumulative score was constructed and dichotomized to ‘basic prevention’ and ‘additional prevention’. Results More additional preventive care was provided to the patients in the ‘low‐risk’ and ‘some risk’ categories than to those classified as ‘high’ or ‘very high’ risk (OR = 2.0, 95% CI 1.4–3.0; P