Estrategias para el manejo de la caries de infancia temprana. Revisión bibliográfica

Abstract

Early childhood caries is a major public health problem, as it affects infants and preschool children around the world, especially in socially disadvantaged sectors. The objective was to describe the main strategies used for the clinical management of early childhood caries. The research was descriptive with a documentary design, which followed the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) checklist, and therefore is an exploratory systematic review. In total, thirteen articles were included for the review. The year of publication of the articles was from 2016 to 2022. According to the research design, the distribution was as follows: systematic reviews without meta-analysis (6), randomized clinical trials (4), systematic reviews with meta-analysis (2) and study of retrospective cohort (1). The main strategies used for the clinical management of early childhood caries are atraumatic restorative treatments, the use of silver diamine fluoride, applications of sodium fluoride and silver nitrate. If a restoration is necessary, glass ionomers and resins are used. When comparing the effectiveness of the materials, the studies are inclined to consider silver diamine fluoride more effective, however, some studies present equal effectiveness for atraumatic restorations and the application of other fluorides.