Causes of premature loss of primary teeth and frequency of the utilization of space maintainers in children aged 6-8 years attending the School of Dentistry at the University of Cuenca during the period 2019-2022

Space maintainers are fixed or removable appliances whose main purpose is to maintain the space caused by the loss of one or more primary teeth, preventing the migration of adjacent teeth into the edentulous space.
Objective: To determine the cause of premature loss of one or more teeth and the frequency of the use of space maintainers in children aged 6-8 years attending the Faculty of Dentistry during the period 2019-2022.
Materials and methods: Observational, descriptive, cross-sectional and retrospective study, through the analysis of 123 undergraduate clinical records of the orthodontic clinic of the Faculty of Dentistry of the University of Cuenca with 78 boys and 45 girls between the ages of 6 and 8 years. For the bibliographic analysis, search strategies were used in the Pubmed, Scielo, Science Direct and Google Scholar databases published between 2015 to 2022.
Results: The most common space maintainer used in children is the Ansa band, followed by the lingual arch, Hawley plate, Nance button and the least frequent was the Schwartz plate. The most frequent etiology causing premature tooth loss is dental caries, followed by pathological root resorption of the deciduous tooth and trauma leading to the need for the use of space maintainer.
Conclusions: Dental caries is the factor that causes the greatest premature loss of primary teeth, with the Ansa Band space maintainer being one of the most commonly used appliances in both boys and girls aged 6 to 8 years.