Overview of Early Childhood Caries in Nigeria and Global Recommended Treatment Guidelines

Early childhood caries (ECC) is characterized by "the presence of one or more decayed (non-cavitated or cavitated lesions), missing (due to caries), or filled surfaces, in any primary tooth in a child 71 months of age or younger". There have been reports of increased incidence of caries in developing countries.A systematic analysis of the global burden of diseases, injuries and risk factors for 195 countries from 1990 to 2015 reported that almost 8% of children globally were affected by untreated ECC. As such, ECC was classified as one of the diseases of public health concern because it affects millions of infants and preschool children worldwide. This study aimed to review the prevalence and associated factors of early childhood caries in Nigeria and also provides current overview alongside globally recommended treatment guidelines.

PubMed database, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (to February 2022) was used for articles search on the guidelines and recommendations for the treatment of ECC. Guidelines and recommendations published by the American Academy of Paediatric Dentistry, International Association of Paediatric Dentistry and European Academy of Paediatric Dentistry from 2017-2020 were retrieved. The following keys used in the MeSH were 'early childhood caries among Nigerian children, 'caries in preschool Nigerian children' 'treatment guidelines', 'treatment policies'and 'treatment recommendations.

A total of 105 (24 plus 81) articles were retrieved but 21(15 plus 6 articles) were selected after the removal of non-specific and duplicated articles.

The prevalence of early childhood caries ranged from 4.3-23.5% in Nigeria while the treatment guidelines and recommendations were case-specific.

The prevalence of early childhood caries varies within the country's geo-political zones.