EARLY CHILDHOOD CARIES: AN UPDATEBackground: Childhood caries is one of the most common chronic childhood diseases. Aim: To identify risk factors for early childhood caries, highlighting their early clinical presentation and the inherent complications. Data source: Information was retrieved from fifteen articles published between 2006 and 2017, in English and Portuguese languages, in PubMed, Scopus and EBSCOhost, complemented by manual search in technical books and guidelines of international societies. Conclusions: Primary care is crucial for effective prevention of ECC. Family physicians are the better placed providers to do it. Updated education on oral health is mandatory.

Dental neglect is defined as an intentional failure of the caretaker in the pursuit and continuity of necessary treatment to achieve an oral health that allows adequate function, free from pain and infection. We intend to clarify, according to the current scientific literature, the clinical indications for the identification of dental neglect in children. After the search in databases and search engines with the keywords "child", "dental" and "neglect", between 1996 and 2016, the results revealed that identifying this condition requires not only a detailed clinical history and clinical data that clearly show the lack of oral health care but also investigating the social and parental determinants in which the child is involved. Thus, inserting the dentist in teams of analysis in case of suspicion proves to be indispensable for the detection of this and other situations of abuse.