International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
5 years ago

Managing Early Childhood Caries with Atraumatic Restorative Treatment and Topical Silver and Fluoride Agents.

Chu, Lo, Gao, Chen, Duangthip
Early childhood caries (ECC) is a significant global health problem affecting millions of preschool children worldwide. In general, preschool children from families with 20% of the lowest family incomes suffered about 80% of the ECC. Most, if not all, surveys indicated that the great majority of ECC was left untreated. Untreated caries progresses into the dental pulp, causing pain and infection. It can spread systemically, affecting a child's growth, development and general health. Fundamental caries management is based on the conventional restorative approach. Because preschool children are too young to cope with lengthy dental treatment, they often receive dental treatment under general anaesthesia from a specialist dentist. However, treatment under general anaesthesia poses a life-threatening risk to young children. Moreover, there are few dentists in rural areas, where ECC is prevalent. Hence, conventional dental care is unaffordable, inaccessible or unavailable in many communities. However, studies showed that the atraumatic restorative treatment had a very good success rate in treating dentine caries in young children. Silver diamine fluoride is considered safe and effective in arresting dentine caries in primary teeth. The aim of this paper is to review and discuss updated evidence of these alternative approaches in order to manage cavitated ECC.

Publisher URL: http://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14101204

DOI: 10.3390/ijerph14101204

You might also like
Discover & Discuss Important Research

Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.

  • Download from Google Play
  • Download from App Store
  • Download from AppInChina

Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.