This Cochrane review of interventions to treat carious lesions conventionally considered to require restorations in primary or permanent teeth with vital pulps included 27 RCTs. Compared with conventional treatment there were lower numbers of failures with the Hall technique and selective excavation (SE) in primary teeth and with SE and stepwise removal in permanent teeth.
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It is now 10 years since the very first Dental Elf Blog. Since then we have published 1626 blogs covering a wide range of topics so we present a brief overview of the categories covered.
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This diagnostic test accuracy review of visual classification systems for the detection and diagnosis of non-cavitated coronal dental caries in children or adults included 67 studies. The findings suggest that these classificationssystems have resonable performance but the certainty of the evidence is low.
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The 2019 Bangkok Declaration defined early childhood caries (ECC) as the presence of a primary tooth with one or more carious (non-cavitated or cavitated lesions), missing (due to caries), or filled surfaces in a child under the age of six years. While dental caries is a preventable chronic health problem it remains a significant public [read the full story…]
This review of the impact of sugar-free gum (SFG) on the level of oral micro-organisms, specifically Streptococcus mutans included 13 studies 11 of whihc were RCTs. The findings indicated that SFG reduces the load of Streptococcus mutans in the oral cavity compared to controls but noe of teh included studies were at low risk of bias.
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This review of the accuracy of different methods for detecting carious lesions in primary and permanent teeth compares visual inspection, radiographs and fluorescence-based detection. 240 studies were included and the findings suggest that visual inspection was adequate for most patients.
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This Cochrane review of the diagnostic accuracy of different electrical conductance devices for the detection and diagnosis of non-cavitated coronal dental caries included 7 studies. The quality of the studies mean we are very uncertain of how electrical conductance devices are in detecting and diagnosing early tooth decay.
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This Cochrane review of the diagnostic accuracy of different dental imaging methods for early enamel lesions included 104 datasets from 77 studies. Low-certainty evidence suggests that imaging for the detection or diagnosis of early tooth decay may result in a relatively high proportion of false-negative results.
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This Cochrane review aimed to estimate the diagnostic test accuracy of different illumination tests for the detection and diagnosis of enamel caries in children or adults. 24 datasets from 23 studies were included with optical coherence tomography showing the most potential but more research is needed.
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This Cochrane diagnostic test accuracy review of fluorescence-based devices for the detection and diagnosis of enamel caries included 131 studies with 114 datasets from 79 studies contributing to the meta-analyses.
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