Caries Diagnosis

Advances in technology allow us the opportunity to not only assess our patients risk for caries based on clinically proven risk factors, but also to diagnose the presence of a biofilm infection, dental caries.  While some methods focus on targeting the presence of a few prevalent markers for the infection such as Mutans Streptococci and Lactobacillus, and usually involve an incubation period, there are also chair-side, real-time diagnostic devices that assess the prevalence of acid-producing organisms in the biofilm, thus giving a more broad-spectrum based result on the biofilm disease model.

One thing to note, there are many technologies on the market today that call themselves caries diagnosis tools, that in fact are just more advanced methods for cavity detection.  In order to really be involved with caries diagnosis, that would require identifying the presence of a bacterial infection.  Once you know it’s there, then you just have to treat it!