White spot lesions after orthodontic treatment assessed by clinical photographs and by quantitative light-induced fluorescence imaging; a retrospective study

A selection of abstracts of clinically relevant papers from other journals. The abstracts on this page have been chosen and edited by John R. Radford.

Abstract

Following debonding, white spot lesions associated with fixed orthodontic treatment can regress although some become worse.

Main

Beerens MW, Boekitwetan F et al. Acta Odontol Scand 2015; 73: 441–446

Orthodontic treatment can be associated with white spot lesions that can remain as 'scars'. In this study, photographs were taken of 51 subjects immediately after debonding, and one year later. From a possible 918 buccal surfaces, over one third demonstrated white spot lesions immediately following debonding. A substantial proportion of these white-spot lesions had regressed when the subjects were examined again after one year. These investigators took both conventional intra-oral photographs and quantitative light-induced fluorescence images. Those white spot lesions captured on the intra-oral photographs were quantified using the ICDAS and also visual transition. Of note, the investigators elected not to dry the teeth before taking the photograph. ICDAS score 1 was therefore excluded. Their assertion that visual transition was superior to ICDAS and indeed 'ICDAS scores did not have sufficient discriminatory accuracy' should be interpreted accordingly.