Uso de modelos epidemiológicos para estimar la incidencia de caries dental y enfermedad periodontal en embarazadas chilenas

objectives: to determine the incidence of caries and periodontal disease in pregnant chilean women through an incidence, prevalence and mortality model (ipm). material and methods: an ipm model was constructed with the prevalence estimated the national health survey 2003 and data from the burden of disease study in chile in 2007. the childbirths by age of women, according to the information from the national statistics institute, were used to estimate the population of pregnant women. data were entered into the dismod program to determine the incidence and check the internal consistency of the model. results: the estimated incidence of caries by the model was of 86.870 new cases and 7.983 incident cases per year for periodontal disease, in a total of 230.831 pregnant women. conclusion: epidemiological models are a useful tool to determine the epidemiology of any disease, where the estimation of the incidence is problematic and field research would be very expensive, long-term and where the ethic problems of the study would be unacceptable.