Interventions for promoting the eruption of palatally displaced permanent canine teeth, without the need for surgical exposure, in children aged 9 to 14 years.

Background

A permanent upper (maxillary) canine tooth that grows into the roof of the mouth and frequently does not appear (erupt) is called a palatally displaced canine (PDC). The reported prevalence of PDC in the population varies between 1% and 3%. Management of the unerupted PDC can be lengthy, involving surgery to uncover the tooth and prolonged orthodontic (brace) treatment to straighten it; therefore, various procedures have been suggested to encourage a PDC to erupt without the need for surgical intervention.

Objectives

To assess the efficacy, safety and cost‐effectiveness of any interceptive procedure to promote the eruption of a PDC compared to no treatment or other interceptive procedures in young people aged 9 to 14 years old.

Search methods

An information specialist searched four bibliographic databases up to 3 February 2021 and used additional search methods to identify published, unpublished and ongoing studies.

Selection criteria

We included randomised controlled trials (RCT) involving at least 80% of children aged between 9 and 14 years, who were diagnosed with an upper PDC and undergoing an intervention to enable the successful eruption of the unerupted PDC, which was compared with an untreated control group or another intervention.

Data collection and analysis

Two review authors, independently and in duplicate, examined titles, keywords, abstracts, full articles, extracted data and assessed risk of bias using the Cochrane Risk of Bias 1 tool (RoB1). The primary outcome was summarised with risk ratios (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). We reported an intention‐to‐treat (ITT) analysis when data were available and a modified intention‐to‐treat (mITT) analysis if not. We also undertook several sensitivity analyses. We used summary of findings tables to present the main findings and our assessment of the certainty of the evidence.

Main results

We included four studies, involving 199 randomised participants (164 analysed), 108 girls and 91 boys, 82 of whom were diagnosed with unilateral PDC and 117 with bilateral PDC. The participants were aged between 8 and 13 years at recruitment. The certainty of the evidence was very low and future research may change our conclusions.

One study (randomised 67 participants, 89 teeth) found that extracting the primary canine may increase the proportion of PDCs that successfully erupt into the mouth at 12 months compared with no extraction (RR 2.87, 95% CI 0.90 to 9.23; 45 participants, 45 PDCs analysed; very low‐certainty evidence), but the CI included the possibility of no difference; therefore the evidence was uncertain. There was no evidence that extraction of the primary canine reduced the number of young people with a PDC referred for surgery at 12 months (RR 0.61 (95% CI 0.29 to 1.28).

Three studies (randomised 132 participants, 227 teeth) found no difference in the proportion of successfully erupted PDCs at 18 months with a double primary tooth extraction compared with extraction of a single primary canine (RR 0.68, 95% CI 0.35 to 1.31; 119 participants analysed, 203 PDCs; mITT; very low‐certainty evidence). Two of these studies found no difference in the proportions referred for surgical exposure between the single and the double primary extraction groups data at 48 months (RR 0.31, 95% CI 0.06 to 1.45).

There are some descriptive data suggesting that the more severe the displacement of the PDC towards the midline, the lower the proportion of successfully erupted PDCs with or without intervention.

Authors' conclusions

The evidence that extraction of the primary canine in a young person aged between 9 and 14 years diagnosed with a PDC may increase the proportion of erupted PDCs, without surgical intervention, is very uncertain. There is no evidence that double extraction of primary teeth increases the proportion of erupted PDC compared with a single primary tooth extraction at 18 months or the proportion referred for surgery by 48 months. Because we have only low to very low certainty in these findings, future research is necessary to help us know for sure the best way to deal with upper permanent teeth that are not erupting as expected.