Prevention of dental caries in children by 3 years of age

Abstract

Summary. Dental caries is one of the most common dental diseases among children. High rates of dental caries occur even in early childhood, which determines the relevance of the development of prevention programs and evaluation of their effectiveness in dental offices.
 The aim of the study – to evaluate the effectiveness of comprehensive prevention of early childhood dental caries among children living in Bukovyna region.
 Materials and Methods. We examined 80 children aged 2–3 years and formed 2 observation groups: main and comparison (42 and 38 children, respectively). Clinical effectiveness of dental caries prevention was determined using the prevalence, intensity of dental caries (dmft), simplified index of oral hygiene (OHI-S). The content of phosphate ions, alkaline phosphatase, total and ionized calcium in the oral fluid was determined by a unified method using reagents from “Philisit-Diagnostics” (Ukraine). Oral hygiene tools were selected for children in both groups and they were trained in oral hygiene. Vitamin-mineral drug "Supervit" and probiotic pills "BioGaia ProDentis" were orally prescribed for 20 days for the prevention of early childhood dental caries among children of the main group. The course of prevention was repeated 2 times a year. The degree of probability of the obtained results was statistically assessed.
 Results and Discussion. The obtained data after the first course of prevention reflected the positive dynamics of changes in laboratory parameters. In particular, the increase in calcium content, mainly due to its free fraction, and phosphate ions, normalization of alkaline phosphatase activity and increase the pH in the oral fluid.
 Conclusions. We found a significant improvement in the state of the mineralizing potential of oral fluid among children, which confirms the effectiveness of the prevention complex.