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.