A bilateral caries invasion in a talon cuspped tooth

Dental caries is a multifactorial disease of hard tooth structure. The causative factors for dental caries are time, specific bacteria, host factors and substrate. No single factor can initiate dental caries. In oral cavity more than 250 microbial species are persisting. The tooth morphology have many inaccessible areas to physiological clearance mechanism. Thus a tooth becomes an ideal place for stubborn adherence for many of these species. Talon cusp is a prominent accessory cusp supposed to arise as a result of evagination on the external surface of a tooth before calcification. It looks like a shape of eagle’s claw hooked on to its prey from the cingulum or cementoenamel junction of mandibular or maxillary anterior tooth. For that reason it is named as talon cusp. The incidence of talon cusp is ranging from 0.04 to 8%. This article reports a case of talon cusp on maxillary permanent right lateral incisor with bilateral caries invasion and it’s management.