Management of dental caries among children: a look at the cost-effectiveness

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Dental caries is the most prevalent non-communicative disease worldwide. Although the etiological factors are well known for years, reducing the number of decayed and missing teeth in children still remains as a barrier. Preventive and curative options are numerous but little is known about their economical advantages. Selecting the intervention that offers the best balance of effectiveness and financial resources becomes crucial in the current situation of budget restrictions worldwide.

Areas covered: This expert review summarizes available evidence on cost-effectiveness analyses of preventive and curative measures to manage dental caries in children.

Expert commentary: Preventive measures have been more extensively studied than dental caries treatment. Only water fluoridation and tooth brushing are well-established as cost-effective preventive approaches. Despite the increasing number of cost analysis treatment studies in the literature, most of them focus on the cost description, with no correlation to the intervention effectiveness. There is a current need of well-designed and well-reported cost-effectiveness regarding dental caries management.

KEYWORDS:

• Cost-effectiveness
• dental caries
• fluoride
• restorative dental treatment
• pediatric patients

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties. Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

Authors were supported by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) grant number 2015/11356-6.