Objective:

to determine the prevalence of carious lesions and gingivitis in 2- to 4-year-old children attending JUNJI daycare centers and urban municipal schools in the city of Valdivia, Chile.

material and method:

descriptive cross-sectional study. a population of 182 two-year-old children and 285 four-year-old children were examined. subjects were selected by stratified random sampling. all subjects were enrolled in daycare centers managed by JUNJI and municipal schools in the city of Valdivia. an oral examination was performed to measure the DMFT and hemorrhagic indexes according to the WHO diagnostic criteria. the presence of cavitated carious lesions and gingivitis was determined, resulting in descriptive statistics according to age and gender.

results:

the prevalence of caries was 12.6 percent in two-year-old children and 41 percent in four-year-olds, respectively. the prevalence of gingivitis was 36.8 percent at 2 years of age and 70.5 percent at 4 years. there were no significant differences by gender at 2 years of age (p=1) or at 4 years (p=0.37). two year-old children have significantly fewer carious lesions and gingivitis less frequently than four-year-olds (p=<.001).

conclusion:

two year-old children have a lower prevalence of carious lesions and gingivitis than four-year-old ones. no relationship between the variables and gender was found.