Tag Archives: salivary flow rate

Caries diagnosis Part 3

Although the evidence shows that many diagnostic methods are less than desirably accurate, current diagnostic interpretations still must be used until new, more sensitive, techniques are available and validated. The evidence-based reports supported previous caries experience and pathologically low salivary flow rate as indicators of significant risk. Most studies from the systematic reviews involved children and excluded root caries, adults, and anterior teeth. Therefore, the clinician must extrapolate reportedly successful preventive and arresting/remineralization techniques from children to adults, root caries, and anterior teeth. In the absence of clear evidence on adequately sensitive diagnostic methods for detecting early noncavitated lesions and risk assessment indicators, clinicians need guidelines for treatment. Continue reading

Caries diagnosis Part 2

Numerous risk indicators, that is, characteristics or measurements that assist in the prediction of caries, whether or not they are involved in caries causation, have been suggested for children. Unfortunately, more of the supportive data come from cross-sectional correlations with accumulated caries experience than from prospective, protocol-based incidence studies. The prospective studies employed different combinations of potential predictors in a variety of populations, varied considerably in sample size and quality, and have not produced a broadly applicable index or set of criteria for risk assessment. More and higher-quality comprehensive, longitudinal, multifactor studies of implicated risk indicators are needed to obtain firm support for their associations with caries incidence, to clarify the strengths of these associations in differing populations, and to reveal the extent to which the risk indicators provide independent as opposed to redundant information. In addition, although the nature of the disease process suggests that many of the proposed indicators may well be appropriate throughout life, validation studies in adult populations are largely absent or incomplete. Continue reading