Abstract
The aim of the study was to det-ermine the prevalence of dental caries among primary school children in Thamar Governorate, Republic of Yemen. A ran-dom sample of 494 primary school child-ren was examined. The sample was divid-ed into 3 age groups; namely, 6, 9, and 12 years old.The WHO methodology (1997) was used to assess the individual tooth status. Results of dental caries in the primary den-tition showed that the mean dmft for the total sample was 3.40 + 0.15 which was decreased with increasing age from 3.59 to 3.57 to 2.19 for the age groups 6, 9 and 12 years respectively with significant sex dif-ference (males was higher than females) as total, 3.93 for the total males, 2.84 for the total females.For the permanent dentition, the mean DMFT was 3.35 + 0.12 which was incr-eased with increasing age with statistically significant age difference as it was 2.39, 2.98, 3.85 for the age groups 6, 9 and 12 years respectively with no sex variation.
