New non-invasive treatments for the control and treatment of early childhood caries

Dentistry is moving from a surgical to a minimally invasive approach, as traditional treatments have shown to be ineffective, specially against early childhood caries (ECC). Less invasive caries treatment strategies have been proposed that would have the advantage of lowering the costs of care as well as decreasing the number of tooth extractions. These include fluoride varnishes and silver diamine fluoride (SDF) applications. Fluoride applications have been shown to be effective in decreasing the incidence of early childhood caries while SDF has been shown to be effective in arresting the progression of cavitated lesions. However, a usual adverse effect of SDF is that it stains the teeth black. New formulations have appeared that replace silver with copper (Tiefenfluorid), to avoid this. At this moment, the effectiveness of Tiefenfluorid to arrest carious lesions in permanent teeth is proven, but there are no studies in deciduous dentition, or clinical studies comparing the effectiveness of all those non-invasive treatments.
We aim to improve the oral health of pre-schoolers through a cost-effective, non-invasive and painless approach in order to increase the probability that Latvian children develop in a healthy manner and can realize their full potential. Based on acquired results new clinical guidelines with evidence-based treatment protocols will be introduced for the treatment of ECC and subsequent new pharmaceutical products could be developed.