More than 1 in 5 U.S. adults have untreated caries, and those with a family income at or below the poverty threshold are at a disproportionately high risk of being part of that group, according to a study published in the April issue of The Journal of the American Dental Association .
The cover story, “Update on the Prevalence of Untreated Caries in the US Adult Population, 2017-2020,” used data from the 2017-2020 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to derive estimates for untreated caries prevalence in the U.S. adult population. Author Nasir Zeeshan Bashir, B.D.S., a research fellow in the University of Bristol School of Oral and Dental Sciences in England, conducted subgroup analyses to assess how the disease was distributed among population subgroups and how the epidemiology differed between coronal and root caries.