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Oral health: key points
Children's oral health - Children's dental health in Scotland has improved over the last 30 years, but this improvement slowed down during the 1990s.
- Many Scottish children still suffer from tooth decay and have begun 'a journey of deteriorating oral health' to adulthood.
- In 2006, at the age of five, 54% of children in Scotland had some dental decay. Those from deprived communities had the greatest disease burden, and are unlikely to meet the Scottish target of 60% with no obvious decay by 2010.
- Scotland's children have worse levels of decay than their contemporaries in the United Kingdom/Great Britain and western Europe.
- Future projections based on historic trends indicate that caries experience in 12-year-old children will remain at the current level until 2010, unless recently introduced public health measures are effective.
Adults' oral health - The oral health of adults in Scotland has improved markedly over the last 30 years.
- These trends are likely to continue into the future, with fewer adults with no natural teeth, and more adults retaining more teeth into their older years.
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