[Autistic children and dental care]

The problems encountered with autistic children in dental office are presented. Following a review of autism in the light of the development of such a child, the treatment of autistic children within dental prevention and in the office is described in detail. Activities during an academic year are tabularly presented, showing that collaboration between the Dental Office for Retarded Children and Center for Autism resulted in a decreased prevalence of caries in the total KEP from 3.3 to 1.3, i. e. the percentage of successfully treated teeth increased by 190%; the primary dentition kp had been 3.3 per child without any treatment, whereas after a year 2.4 teeth per child were successfully treated. Thus, a combined treatment, provided by a dental team and a pedopsychiatric team together, can obviously result in good rehabilitation of oral health in autistic children.