Notwithstanding significant reduction since the 1960s, tooth loss remains an important problem in the U.S. Its uneven distribution among adults makes this problem more severe for some individuals than the mean values of tooth loss indicate. While the role of disease in tooth loss in important, focusing on which disease causes the most tooth loss may obscure the complexity of the issue and underemphasize the influence of other factors. The overall objective of this Project is to measure tooth loss and its determinants in the natural settings of operating private dental offices and larger public clinics. The initial phase of the project will be a pilot study which will field test a protocol in a selected number of practices in Connecticut. The information from the pilot study will be used to refine and finalize the data collection procedures and the conceptual model of tooth loss for the full-scale study. Once the final protocol is set, the data to be collected will be used to estimate a more complete model of tooth loss than has been available to date and assess the relative significance of factors contributing to the loss of permanent teeth in the U.S. More specifically, the investigation will provide information regarding the relative influence of disease/clinical conditions, economic variables, and patient/provider characteristics and attitudes on decisions to extract permanent teeth.
