Clinical Research Project Dentistry

Does Regular Dental Treatment Influence the Long-term Dental Health of the Horse?

 

This is the question Graham Duncanson from Westover Veterinary Centre, Norfolk is trying to answer in his Fellowship thesis. His research is being supported by the BEVA Trust

Graham hopes to identify factors that are associated with an increased or decreased likelihood of the most common equine dental pathologies. He will also examine the effect of regular dental treatment on reduction in severity or remission of dental pathology and examine the effect of regular dental treatments on the long-term health of the equine oral cavity, with reference to undesirable endpoints such as dental loss, wavemouth, stepmouth, and widespread periodontal disease.

To date Graham has completed his literature review. Below are some interesting quotes taken from the review:

The science of equine dentistry and especially prophylactic dentistry has remained poorly supported by evidence-based approaches to diagnosis and treatment (Carmalt 2008).

 As long ago as 1965 a survey of the incidence of equine disease carried out by the British Equine Veterinary Association (BEVA 1965) reported that nearly 10% of the requests for veterinary attention were for dental reasons. These were mainly requests for the routine rasping of teeth and dental prophylaxis. There may not have been general agreement as to the value of such procedures.

There is no doubt that there are differences in the incidence of different types of dental disorders recorded in referral surveys and those in practice (Hole 2008).

It is only relatively recently that practitioners have become aware that if a cheek tooth is removed, the opposing tooth will not be ground down in line with the rest of the cheek tooth row. This will cause problems. It has also been observed that the tooth may have an accelerated eruption rate. This has been termed ‘super eruption’. This will cause even more severe problems. It is vital that such animals receive regular dental checks, with regular rasping of the occlussal surface of any super erupting teeth. There does not appear to be any guidance in the literature as to the frequency for such procedures.

Data has been collected from 4915 dental charts and kindly put on a database by Tim Parkin at the Universtiy of Glasgow. Tim is helping Graham to analyse this data. Graham is also being assisted by Safia Barakzai from the Universtiy, collectively they are endeavour to make sense of the large quantity of data/information.

 

A detailed report of Grahams findings will be published on the BEVA website once the project has been completed so watch this space.