[The cariogram principle applied to the patients with high caries risk]

The "Cariogram" is a new concept, conceived initially as an educational model, aiming at illustrating the multifactorial background of dental caries in a simple way. This educational interactive program has been developed for better understanding of the multifactorial aspects of dental caries and to act as a guide in the attempts to estimate the caries risk. Caries risk is the probability that an individual will develop carious lesions, reaching a given stage of the disease in progression during a specified period of time, conditional that the exposure status for risk factors remains stable during the period in question. For patients with high caries risk, efforts should be made to increase the "chance" sector and reduce each sector responsible for caries risk and particularly the unfavorable one.