Abstract
Design
Randomised control trial in six-year-old children.
Intervention
The control group received dental check-ups twice a year, including professional fluoride gel applications and fissure sealants. The increased professional fluoride application (IPFA) group has the same care as in the control group plus two additional fluoride gel application per year. The non-operative caries treatment and prevention (NOCTP) had individualised recall intervals following the Nexø protocol.1 Data on time and resource use as well as data on effectiveness were collected for three years.
Outcome measure
The primary outcome measure was the incremental cost effectiveness ratio of methods of caries prevention. Other outcomes included societal and health perspective cost effectiveness of the caries prevention methods and overall effectiveness (number of prevented DMFS) of the methods.
Results
Two hundred and thirty children participated in the trial, with a 32% drop out in the NOCTP group, 20% in the IPFA group and 15% in the control group. The resources use and total costs in Euros over three years are shown in the table below.
Conclusions
The NOCTP regimen was more effective and more costly than regular dental care. Based on the limited available amount of evidence regarding the willingness to pay for dental care, the benefits seem to outweigh the additional costs, implying that this is a cost-effective strategy. Increasing the number of professional fluoride applications resulted in a slight reduction of caries increment, but at higher costs than the NOCTP strategy. The results of this study confirm the findings in previous research. Therefore, implementing NOCTP on a larger scale should be considered.
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Address for correspondence: J.H. Vermaire, TNO Life Style – Behavioural and Societal Sciences, Wassenaarseweg 56 NL–2333 AL, Leiden (The Netherlands). E-mail: erik.vermaire@tno.nl
Vermaire JH, van Loveren C, Brouwer WB, Krol M. Value for money: economic evaluation of two different caries prevention programmes compared with standard care in a randomised controlled trial. Caries Res 2014; 48: 244-253 DOI: 10.1159/000356859
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Allen, Y., Duane, B. Risk-based caries prevention may be more effective in children. Evid Based Dent 15, 41–42 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ebd.6401021
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ebd.6401021
