Cancer therapies can damage children's teeth, according to research published by the University of Helsinki, Finland. Dr Päivi Hölttä, Licentiate in Dentistry, from the Institute of Dentistry at the University, studied the effects of high-dose anticancer chemotherapy and total body irradiation on the development of permanent teeth and found that cytostatic and radiation therapies administered before stem cell transplantation often damage children's permanent teeth.

The children examined in the study were treated for cancer or aplastic anaemia, had received stem cell transplantation at ages 1 to 9.4 years, preceded with a high-dose anticancer chemotherapy and, in most cases, with total body irradiation.

In her research, Dr Hölttä studied how many of the treated children lacked permanent teeth or had unusually small teeth, and how often dental roots were poorly developed.

The results indicated that 31% of the treated children lacked permanent teeth (as opposed to 8% of the Finnish population), when wisdom teeth were excluded. Lack of permanent teeth was most frequent (77%) among children who had been less than three years old at stem cell transplantation. The highest number of missing teeth was 12 and those who had been over five years of age at stem cell transplantation lacked only wisdom teeth.

A significant finding was that a high-dose anticancer chemotherapy alone caused a lack of permanent teeth nearly as often as when combined with total body irradiation, which, however, slightly increased the number of missing teeth.

Dr Hölttä said, “We still don't know about the long-term consequences of the treatments, which is why the monitoring of the patients should be continuous and centralised. Cooperation between specialists in children's haematology and oncology and specialists in various fields of dentistry is of fundamental importance in providing for these children the best possible dental care in the future.”