Focus on Caries Prevention

This article addresses all the things that we as dental hygienists can and should do to help

prevent dental caries. Things like providing oral health education, addressing patient risk level,

and making recommendations based on that patient’s risk level are all good techniques for

prevention. It’s also important for hygienists to understand the risk factors and all the possible

interventions that relate to caries risk level. Having a well-educated hygienist can help a patient

better understand and treat the burden that is tooth decay.

This affects me as a dental hygiene student because basically everything in here is

information that I am going to need to learn to do my job later in life. Hygiene is all about

prevention and education, and this article solely talks about prevention. So of course, I will

utilize the information in this article during my career. I am going to need to know how to do a

caries risk assessment on a patient and what prevention methods will be best suited for that

patient. I am going to have to know how to explain to my patient why they should have these

certain treatments, like applying sealants and fluoride, and why they should cut those carbs out

of their diet. The reason I chose to do this article was because our last class we took a caries risk

assessment survey on ourselves to help give ourselves the better understanding of how to do one.

We talked about CAMBRA, caries management by risk assessment, in class and this article talks

about it too, and it also talks about the steps you should take to educate your patients after you

have figured out what level risk they are at. A fact that the article mentioned that kind of shocked

me was that an estimated 2.3 billion people have decay present on permanent teeth, that number

is too high, we need to start making sure people are aware of how to properly take care of their

teeth and hopefully teach the generations to come.

 Reference

Fehrenbacher, J. (2022). Focus on caries prevention. Dimensions of Dental Hygiene, 20(2), 26-

28