Dental data

The dental data is collected from Primary health care outpatient visits register. The data contains information on oral health collected during a dental check-up. These include gum health and the number of filled, missing and decayed teeth. In addition, a DMFS index is provided, which indicates the total number of decayed, missing and filled tooth surfaces.

The number of filled, missing and decayed teeth are recorded with a number ranging from 0 to 32. DMFS index starts from 0 and has a maximum value of 148. Values outside the above thresholds have been removed from the data. Gingival health is recorded by the Community Periodontal Index (CPI (Ainamo et al. 1982)). The CPI describes the condition of a patient's gums and it is measured with a gum caliper. The worst result for each sextant is recorded as follows: 0 = healthy gums, 1 = gingivitis, 2 = tartar, 3 = deepened gingival pocket, 4 = 6mm or deeper gingival pocket and X if the sextant does not have enough teeth to take the measurement. The registrar shall record the result X, 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 for each sextant in the data. The data are recorded separately for each sextant.

Dental data has been processed to the same format as detailed longitudinal data so that those two can be easily joined together.