Retaining teeth or removing – what to do when.

This addition to the DAN journal club shows how one research question can be tackled using quite different approaches, with each of those having its own strengths and weaknesses. This provides an insight into the point that every type of study comes with a particular lens that it applies, which influences the interpretation of its findings.

The 3 videos explore risk factors around dental caries in children and young adults. The papers used are all recent open access papers from the Journal of Dental Research. Each video runs for 20-30 minutes.

The first study uses data from a longitudinal Australian study to make predictions about the impact of dietary sugar restrictions on caries in children. The second study is from the UK, and explores the impact of the UK sugar tax on sugar-sweetened soft drinks in terms of reductions in hospitalisations for GA treatment of severe caries in children and young adults. Third study is from the USA, and uses "big data" from the US NHANES study and AI tools to look into the impact of social disadvantage on caries risk.