Clinical Reversal of Pit and Fissure Caries After Using Ozone

D. REANEY and E. LYNCH ( 1GKT, King’s College Dental Institute, University of London, 2Health and Health Care Research Group, Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland)

Ozone has been shown to clinically reverse primary root carious lesions and early occlusal pit and fissure caries. This study aim ed to assess the use of Ozone to m anage pit and fissure caries in a general dental practice. Objectives: This study assessed the effect of a novel ozone delivery system1 on primary pit and fissure carious lesions over a 1 month period. Met hods: 22 patients in a general dental practice were entered with 78 carious lesions. Each carious lesion had been deemed to require drilling and filling and had a DIAGNOdent2 reading between 20 and 42 at baseline. A fter randomisation, lesions were assigned to either receiving no treatm ent or ozone treatment with each subject having at least one control lesion. Ozone was applied to each test lesion for 30 seconds. After 1 month, patients were recalled and clinically re-assessed for lesion severity. The DIAGNOdent2 was again employed to objectively quantify the carious lesions. Results: After 1 month, all 22 patients, reattended for re-evaluation. There were no observed adverse events. 74.4% of the ozone-treated primary pit and fissure carious lesi o ns had clinically rev ersed based on the clinical m easurement of lesion severity. 100% of the Ozone-treated lesions either reversed or rem ained stable clinically (P<0.001). 59% of the ozone-treated primary pit and fissure carious lesions had reversed based on the DIAGNOde nt readings (P<0.05) whilst 82% of the control carious lesions, which had not received any ozone treatment, showed a significant increase in progression of severity, based on the DIAGNOde nt readings (P<0.05). Control lesions did not significantly change clinically. Conclusions: This treatment regim e using ozone m ay be considered to be an effective alternative to convention al "drilling and filling" for primary occlusal fissure carious lesions in general d ental practice.