The rules of the dental game have changed, promising patients better futures and health outcomes on all levels. Science is making this possible.
Dentistry is an exciting field and, like medicine, is moving closer to the concept of personalised disease management. Science is playing a huge role and offers better outcomes and more predictability for patients, saving the need for invasive treatments and costly care.
Many patients, who have faced a lifetime of dental disease with an air of resignation and despair, are suddenly able to contemplate a disease free oral environment. Personal profiling, called the Dental Fingerprint, allows us to highlight an individual’s risk of disease, and plan strategies to avoid it. Some of your susceptibility relates to your genetic makeup, while other factors relate to your ability to fight disease and the bacteria that occupy your mouth.
Simple screening tools, coupled with detailed lifestyle questionnaires, open a fountain of hidden risk factors. Most patients are unaware of these risks and are surprised to find their oral state is not their fault, or a function of their neglect.
How Does It Work?
Unlike the standard dental check up, a Dental Fingerprint Analysis will involve detective work, a review of past and current disease patterns and technology.
For example, we know that decay is an infectious disease caused by a dominance of bad bacteria in the oral biofilm. The mouth is a very dirty place, with more varieties of bacteria than the bowel. Not all bacteria are bad – some are protective and are engaged in digestion and immune protection.
We’re born without any decay-causing bacteria and usually inherit these bugs from a parent, typically the mother. Transference and infection occurs through exchange of saliva when we first start to eat solid food or through loving contact such as kissing.
Not everyone gets decay – partly because they don’t carry many of the decay-causing bacteria. Within families one sibling might have an active decay rate, mimicking a parent’s pattern, while others may develop little of no decay and resemble a parent with a healthy mouth. The reason is entirely related to the bacterial mix in the mouth of the individual.
The inherited mix of bacteria will be influenced by the chemistry of the mouth too. Bad bacteria thrive in sugar-rich, dry and acidic environments. Create an acid environment with a very acidic diet and bad bacteria will dominate, causing decay. Layer in a dry mouth and sugar – the bacterial fuel – and the mix is a lethal cocktail for teeth.
Here’s the good news – change the bacteria and decay goes away. Change the acidity, and both erosion and decay can disappear. Change the dryness and sugar, and decay doesn’t happen. That can be life-changing for many patients who have contemplated a pathway to endless dental treatment, expense, and possibly tooth loss.
Science allows us to sample the bacteria with a simple test. In less than a minute we can predict the risk of decay in an individual – based on ATP Bioluminescent screening. Used widely in other industry, this test model shows the extent of bacterial activity in the mouth. The mouth may look very clean, but when there is a dominance of decay-causing bacteria the screen will read high. We can quantify the risk of decay, and measure reducing risk through a variety of treatments.
The patient can be alerted that they carry a risk of active decay. We can predict disease before it has happened clinically – a remarkable concept that allows early intervention, rather than ‘band aid’ treatments once it is too late.
Patients have the choice to:
- Intervene and eliminate the risk, coupled with appropriate lifestyle changes
- Do nothing, continuing to carry the risk of disease and a lifetime of treatment.
The Dental Check Up – Why Bother?
The dental checkup is far from a needless expense when it embraces a Dental Fingerprint Analysis. Ignoring the dental checkup makes no long term financial sense. It is the best investment you can make for your health.
A dentist focused on Risk Management will always view your mouth as a dynamic, changing environment that needs constant and careful re-evaluation and testing. The frequency of your ‘check up’ or Dental Fingerprint Analysis will vary, according to your personal profile. Some patients may not need to see a hygienist more often than annually. Others may need review four times a year.
Oral health is increasingly linked to overall health. The mouth is a mirror to many systemic disease and inflammation through bacterial infection in the mouth is linked to cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes, premature and underweight birth. The biotech world is moving rapidly toward a Point Of Care Device which will allow the dental checkup to be a forecast of systemic health. Readings taken on high-tech sensors from saliva samples will be able to predict many other sustemic disease risks. The dentist will be the primary diagnostician of the future, creating a first point of contact for directing the patient to a physician.
To find out more about a Dental Fingerprint Analysis click HERE.
