today ADX Sydney 18-20 March

n Researchers from the Univer- sity of Sydney have found that tooth decay can be stopped, re- versed and prevented without the traditional “drill and fill” ap- proach that has dominated dental care for decades. Acknowledging the outcomes of the seven-year study, the researchers called for a general shift towards preventive measures in early caries treat- ment. Developing a set of protocols that they called the Caries Man- agement System (CMS), the re- searchers compared people who received traditional “drill and fill” treatment with those who re- ceived CMS treatment, focusing on prevention. The CMS protocols included the assessment of decay risk, the interpretation of dental X-rays and the specific treatment of early decay. Among other things, preven- tive measures included the appli- cation of high concentration fluo- ride varnish to the sites of early decay and, on the patient’s side, restrictingsugarysnacksandbev- erages between meals. In testing the CMS protocols on 1,000 patients from 22 general dental practices in New South Wales and Australian Capital Ter- ritory, decay risk was substan- tially reduced during the seven- year study. Moreover, the need for fillings was30to50percentloweramong CMS patients in comparison to the control group. At 80 per cent, the reduction was even greater among those considered at a high- risk, patients who were getting as many as two fillings per year. “Thisresearchsignalstheneed for a major shift in the way tooth decay is managed by dentists,” said Associate Professor Wendell Evans from the University of Sydney. “A tooth should only be drilled and filled where an actual hole-in-the-tooth is already evi- dent,” he said. According to Evans, tooth de- cay is not the rapidly progressive phenomenon that dentists long believed it was. Instead, it devel- ops more slowly, leaving plenty of time for the decay to be detected and treated before it becomes a cavity and a filling is required. On average, it takes four to eight years for decay to progress from the tooth’s outer layer (enamel) to the inner layer (dentine), he ex- plained. The results of the study were presented in the article “The Caries Management System: Are preventive effects sustained post- clinical trial?” which was pub- lished online in the Community, Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology journal on 7 December 2015. 7 Traditional treatment of tooth decay is outdated By DTI TRIOS® was named the most accurate in a comparison study of leading intraoral scanners published by the American Dental Association. All TRIOS® intraoral scanners feature Ultrafast Optical Sectioning™ technology to provide you with industry-leading precise 3D color digital impressions. What TRIOS® accuracy means to your dental practice: • Confidence and reliability • Fewer remakes, retakes and adjustments • Improved patient experience 3Shape.com TRIOS ® — #1 in accuracy Find 3Shape online See TRIOS® live at ADX AD news 21 ADX Sydney 2016 Early tooth decay could be stopped and reversed by preventive oral care measures.© Vinne

today ADX Sydney 18-20 March

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