Silver Diamine Fluoride: Is its use, alone or combined with fluoride varnish, effective in combating early childhood caries?

Abstract

Dental caries is characterized as a dysbiosis, an imbalance of the microbiota in the oral environment. The objective of this integrative literature review was to analyze articles published between 2018 and 2023, with the following guiding question: is the use of silver diamine fluoride associated or not with fluoride varnish effective in combating early onset caries? For this, a search was performed in the Medline electronic database (via PubMed), with the descriptors “diammine silver fluoride and fluoride varnishes” and the filters “full texts”, “year of publication - 5 years”, “clinical study”, “randomized clinical trial”. There were 378 articles resulting from the search, and after applying the filters, 4 remained. Therefore, after the full reading, 4 articles were included in the review, which were published in China (2020), Thailand (2020 and 2022) and in the United States (2023). After the study, it was noted that both the application of DFP and VF are effective in preventing and controlling caries. It can be concluded that the application of DFP associated or not with VF is effective in the control and prevention of early onset caries.