Caries risk reduction in patients attending a caries management clinic

A Caries Management Clinic was established for patients at high risk of caries aiming to reduce caries incidence to close to zero. That is, to prevent new lesions on existing sound surfaces, along the susceptible restoration margins, and to remineralize existing cavitated and non-cavitated lesions. Twenty patients attended the clinic every two weeks from April to December 2005.

The Caries Management System is a ten-step non-invasive strategy to arrest and remineralize early lesions and includes consideration of the patient at risk, the status of each individual lesion, patient management, clinical management, and monitoring.

After six months, there was a 42 per cent increase in gingival sites having Gingival Index scores of zero, and a 21 per cent decrease in sites having Gingival Index scores of 2 compared to baseline (chi(2 )=( )137.67, 4 df, p = 0.00001). Ready to change (RTC) patients had significantly fewer sites scored GI

This audit revealed that the implementation of the non-invasive approach to caries management which combined intensive coaching in oral hygiene maintenance, special home care and intensive monitoring in a clinic for high-risk patients was able to reduce gingival inflammation and maintain low plaque levels, at least within the scope of this short-term review.