Prevention of Noncarious Lesions in Children

Probably due to the fluoridation and improved oral hygiene habits, there has been a significant caries decline in children in developed countries. At the same time, epidemiological studies show significant increase of hard dental tissue loss by noncarious processes. Noncarious wear could be the result of three processes: abrasion, attrition and erosion. Nowadays, the most important of them, and the most frequent is dental erosion, an irreversible dissolution of hard tissue caused by acids, without bacterial involvement that affects both primary and permanent dentition by the same pathophysiological process. The first step in dental erosion prevention is identifying children in risk early enough by evaluating different etiological factors. Based on this analysis, an individually tailored preventive program should be suggested to the children and presented to their parents. That program should comprise: dietary advice in order to improve their dietary habits, fluoridation, improvement of salivary flow rate by using buffering products and advice on the proper dental hygiene. Not only patients, but also many dental and medical professionals are not sufficiently educated about the epidemiology, etiology and the ways of prevention of this irreversible loss of hard dental tissue. The knowledge on all these aspects of dental erosion should represent an important part of a contemporary paediatric and preventive (dental) medicine.