Randomized clinical trial on arresting dental root caries through silver diamine fluoride applications in community-dwelling elders

Key Points

• A selection of abstracts of clinically relevant papers from other journals.

• The abstracts on this page have been chosen and edited by John R. Radford.

Abstract

The immediate application of potassium iodide to dental root caries treated with silver diamine fluoride improved the colour of the lesion from black to bright yellow, but this colour change was only short lived.

Main

Li R, Lo EC et al. J Dent 2016;51; 15–20

'It would be a win-win situation if KI can prevent the staining associated with SDF (silver diamine fluoride) without reducing its effectiveness...' Unfortunately, the aesthetic improvement with potassium iodide was only short-lived although it did not reduce the efficacy of SDF at arresting dental root caries. The efficacy of SDF was all the more remarkable, as this study was carried out in an area with water fluoridation (study carried out in Hong Kong whose water is fluoridated at an optimal concentration of 0.5 ppm). In this study, 83 elderly subjects with 157 root surfaces with active caries lesion were randomly allocated to one of the three following groups: placebo control (soda water), annual application of SDF, and annual application of SDF solution immediately followed by potassium iodide solution. Root surface caries was recorded at 6 monthly intervals for the duration of the study of 30 months only.