Do all roads really lead to Rome? Evidence based rehabilitation of a child with severe caries
In this lecture I will try and map out my journey over the years and sharing with the participants the evidence which has changed my clinical practice to try and understand whether both conventional and biological approaches give similar outcomes for the child.
I have been practicing clinical pediatric dentistry for some 30 years now. My training was centered on interventionist, invasive conventional restorative management that often involving sacrificing the pulp in primary molars for those with large proximal lesions. It has been assumed that marginal ridge breakdown is associated with severe pulpal changes mandating the use of pulpotomy prior to restoration of the tooth. However, recent evidence has challenged these old beliefs. There is convincing evidence that pulp can be more conservatively managed through biological approaches, with enhanced preventive measures rather than the conventional radical ones. These new pieces of evidence have changed my own clinical practice hugely in the last 5 years and I personally have been relying less on such radical procedures and more and more on the more biological ones, with excellent outcomes. In this lecture I will try and map out my journey over the years and sharing with the participants the evidence which has changed my clinical practice to try and understand whether both conventional and biological approaches give similar outcomes for the child. So can all roads really lead to Rome?