Two-year Study on Different Fluoride Supplement Controlling Early Childhood Caries

Objectives: Early childhood caries has been a serious dental problem in China; hence the objective of the study was to compare the preventive effect of two fluoride supplementing methods on caries developing in toddlers and to find out a better option for keeping early childhood caries under control with good acceptability and safety.

Subjects and methods: 285 children at age of 2 to 3 years old were included in the study after informed consent was obtained from the caretakers. The children were randomly assigned into three groups. Children in group 1 were applied with fluoride varnish (Vivadent) by dental professionals twice a year; children in group 2 were given fluoride drop once a day, five days a week throughout two years (except for vacation time), while the group 3 served as a negative control which received no intervention mentioned above. The children were examined by dentists blinded to the allocation for dmfs increment twice a year. All the data were processed by SPSS package (11.0).

Results: After two years, the increment of caries for the children from the first group was 3.45 while that was 2.58 respectively for those children in group 2. The dmfs increment of both the tested groups, treated with fluoride varnish and drop, was significantly lower than that from group 3 (P<0.05). No significant difference in caries increment was found between group 1 and group 2. None of any other side effects were reported except for that more children receiving fluoride varnish complained of being sick when the material was applied.

Conclusion: Fluoride varnish and fluoride drop are effective on preventing early childhood caries from increasing dramatically. Fluoride drop seemed to be the better choice concerning its acceptability.