Pre-school telediagnosis of dental problems: A teledentistry project

Early childhood caries is a common disease of childhood and represents a serious problem in pediatric dentistry. In Portugal, the prevalence of caries in children with only 6 years old is around 50% and most of them only begin dental visits after this age. On seeking to reverse this trend, remote diagnosis can be a procedure to explore in order to promote the appropriate early diagnosis and treatment, so that children can maintain an adequate oral health. For the purpose, a teledentistry project was developed for remotely screening dental problems based on non-invasive photograph, using accessible and low-cost technologies. Remote diagnoses were perfomed by different Dentists and data were compared with in-person examination (gold standard). The results suggest that this teledentistry project could constitute a valuable approach to help in the early diagnosis of dental problems acting, so that children could be referred to dental treatment and thus can sustain a healthy oral status.