Fissure sealants in a group of 3-4-year-old children.

Retention of sealant material is the main determinant for the caries preventive e€ect of sealants. This may partly explain the low interest in using ®ssure sealants in young children, where sucient moisture control may be dicult to obtain. Consequently, almost no data are available in the literature on the e€ect of ®ssure sealants in young pre-school children. The purpose of the present communication is to report the retention of a light polymerized ®ssure sealant (Prisma-Shield) and an autopolymerized sealant (Delton) in primary molars of young children. The study included 52 children (25 boys and 27 girls) with a median age of 3 years 7 months (range 2 years 11 months to 4 years 11 months) who were attending municipal dental clinics for regular dental care in and around the municipality of AÊ rhus and in the paediatric dentistry section of the department. All children were examined by the same dentist (E.H.), who also placed all the sealants. Caries was diagnosed at the cavitation level and only children with pairs of sound primary molars were included. The teeth within each tooth pair were randomly assigned to sealing with Delton or Prisma-Shield. The manufacturer's instructions were carefully followed for both materials. Mean follow-up period was 2.8 years (range 2.0±3.3 years), at which time 20 pairs of upper second molars, two pairs of upper ®rst molars, 28 pairs of lower second molars, and one pair of lower ®rst molars were re-examined. Complete retention was found in 70.6% of the teeth sealed with Delton and in 76.5% of the teeth sealed with Prisma-Shield (Table 1). The slightly better retention of the light polymerized ®ssure sealant could be due to the shorter period of moisture control needed for placing a light polymerized sealant. However, McNemar's test showed that the di€erence was not statistically signi®cant in this group (P = 0.49). Table 2 shows that caries development after sealing was low with both types of materials (5.9% for Delton and 9.8% for Prisma-Shield). 67% (four out of six) of the pairs with di€erent caries development in the two teeth developed caries in the tooth sealed with Prisma-Shield, but not in the tooth sealed with Prisma-Shield. The 95% con®dence limits for this parameter calculated according to the method described by Armitage & Berry [1] were 0.045 and 3.49 and included the value 0.5, indicating no di€erence in caries development after the two sealants.