Over 250 dental professionals from 50 UK dental practices are undertaking a study addressing how best to deal with caries in young children's teeth.

'Filling Children's Teeth: Indicated or Not?' – or FiCTION – is a study funded by the National Institute for Health Research's Health Technology Assessment Programme and will inform the debate around managing caries in the primary dentition by providing robust evidence.

The study is investigating three approaches to managing caries in the primary teeth of 3-7-year-olds: 1) the conventional approach with prevention – fully removing caries using local anaesthesia and conventional restorations; 2) the biological approach with prevention – caries is either left in situ or only partially removed before being sealed off from the oral environment using adhesive restorations or preformed metal crowns; and finally 3) the prevention alone approach - arresting dental caries by application of intensive preventive techniques according to national guidelines.

The dental practices taking part in the study are volunteers from Cardiff, London, North-East England, Scotland, Yorkshire and Derbyshire, making FiCTION one of the biggest clinical studies ever to take place in primary dental care in the UK. Regular regional meetings are being held to bring the individual practices together to discuss the progress of the trial and to share experiences.

More information on the FiCTION Trial can be found at http://research.ncl.ac.uk/fictiontrial/ or you can email the Trial Administrator, Amy Caldwell-Nichols, at fiction@dundee.ac.uk.