Nomogram For Screening 12-Year-Old Children For Severe Caries

The aim of this study was to develop and validate a nomogram for predicting the probability of severe caries among 12-year-old children based on risk factors in Guizhou Province, China. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 2437 12-year-old children in 11 districts (counties) of 9 cities in Guizhou Province. They were randomly allocated into a training set and a validation set at the ratio of 6:4. Children with DMFT ≥ 3 were considered to have severe caries. Through univariate analysis and multivariate logistic regression analysis, crucial variables were determined to establish the nomogram. The performance of the nomogram were assessed using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), calibration curve and decision curve analysis (DCA). Five risk factors, including gender, ethnicity, economic region, self-assessment of oral health, and dental visit history were identified as predictors of severe caries. The AUC values were 0.701 and 0.704 for the training and validation sets, respectively. The calibration curves demonstrated favorable agreement between the nomogram model and actual observations, and DCA indicated that using the nomogram to predict severe caries risk would be beneficial if the threshold probability ranged from 7% to 66% in the training set and 9% to 55% in the validation set. The nomogram provides a user-friendly tool for screening severe caries. This model enables non-dental healthcare providers to effectively evaluate caries risk.