Cheaper Dental Treatment for Kids as Effective as Sealants, Finds Study

USA: Despite significant progress in fighting tooth decay, it remains a major health issue for children in the United States, with over half of children aged 6 to 8 and almost 60% of adolescents having cavities, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While most states have programs that provide high-risk children and teenagers with dental sealants, the programs can be costly and challenging to implement.

Pilot Project Compared Dental Sealants with SDF

A pilot program in New York, called CariedAway, compared dental sealants with an application of silver diamine fluoride (SDF), a colourless liquid that can be brushed onto molars. The Food and Drug Administration has approved SDF for cavity prevention in both children and adults.

Researchers from NYU College of Dentistry visited 47 New York elementary schools, where they examined the teeth of about 3,000 students in kindergarten through third grade and gave them either sealants or SDF.

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More Effective than Dental Sealants

When researchers visited the schools again in 2021 and 2022 after pausing the program during the early days of the pandemic, they again examined the children’s teeth. While 82% of the kids treated with sealants showed no new cavities, 81 percent treated with SDF also had no new cavities.

SDF was even more effective than sealants for students with existing cavities, with 56% of those with SDF not experiencing cavity worsening compared with 46% of kids treated with sealants.

Though the treatment can blacken existing cavities, it is not associated with any significant adverse effects. According to researchers, SDF could help tackle some limitations of school sealant programs, as it is cheaper and quicker to apply and can be administered by registered nurses, not just dentists.

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Attractive Alternative

This new study could be beneficial, especially for children from lower-income families. According to the CDC, those children are 15% less likely to get sealants and twice as likely to have untreated cavities than their counterparts in higher-income homes.

The researchers in the new study call SDF an “attractive alternative” that could reduce oral health problems worldwide. However, more research is needed to determine the long-term effects of the treatment.

Read the clinical article: Effect of Silver Diamine Fluoride on Caries Arrest and Prevention The CariedAway School-Based Randomized Clinical Trial