Deciduous tooth eruption in children who fail to gain weight.

In order to investigate the usefulness of the number of erupted deciduous teeth (NET) as a growth parameter, we studied deciduous tooth eruption (DTE) in 46 infants between the ages of 6 and 30 months, who failed to gain weight. The cause of the failure to thrive was intrauterine growth retardation in 17 children, and undetermined in 29. In these babies, height and head circumference were significantly below the mean as well. However, NET was almost unchanged when compared to NET of Israeli children of the same age. These findings support the view that DTE is an independent process, unrelated to other anthropometric measurements. Thus, NET may not be used as a clinical parameter of physical development.