Effect of daily habits on the efficacy of Silver diamine fluoride (SDF) in arresting dental caries among children

The Developed countries are working on the prevention of dental caries by different means and methods. But unfortunately in Pakistan this era of prevention is missing due to which burden of caries treatment is afforded by the patients and our government dental set ups become crowded due to high caries rate. Children aged 3-9 years of both sexes having 01cavitated lesion, scored 3-6 by International Caries Detection & Assessment System (ICDAS). Drying of tooth & proper isolation was an indispensable component of this protocol to maximize SDF’s ability to arrest a lesion. Consultant verified that after three weeks of follow-up, there was either an arrest of the carious lesion or improvement by ≥1 ICDAS score. After a 3-week follow-up, if the ICDAS criteria increased by one number, silver diamine fluoride was deemed unsuccessful. All data was noted in Performa. Out of 753 patients, 134 (17.80%) were females and 619 (82.20%) were males. Mean ICDAS-score before application of SDF in this study was 4.80 ± 1.26, whereas mean ICDAS-score after application was 1.92 ± 0.83. More than one-third of participants brushed their teeth twice a day. More than half (63.21%) of children have a habit of night-time bottle feeding. Fifty-eight percent patients reported the use of soft drinks.55% of those using the soft drinks used the straw, while 45% did not used straw. It is concluded that bottle feeding and cold drinks intake significantly decreased the efficacy of SDF in arresting the caries progression.