Education and Prevention – the (sometimes forgotten) Keys for Success

In the rush to train and practice various techniques, procedures and technologies, we sometimes skip important steps in treatment planning and implementation. While trying to excel in our clinical skills, we now and again, leave out the preventive, educational part of the treatment plan and also the possibilities to maintain and improve by using the natural healing capacity of the body. Treating disease starts with and is based on prevention. This is true for both major diseases that we are mainly dealing with in the dental profession – caries and periodontal diseases. Our profession is sometimes too busy dealing with improving our treatment results and too often abandons the preventive interventions that should be our main goal. Each and every patient should be engaged in a comprehensive and well-organized prevention program. Explaining the disease, its etiology, risk factors, and ways for intervention and prevention of all types to patients is our primary role, not filling teeth or placing implants immediately after extractions. Success in dental treatment is the ability to bring patients to a stable condition in which they come for regular checkups with no need for further treatment. This is success, not just a perfect color match or a stable bone level around an implant. A patient who needs ongoing dental treatment, again and again for years, should be considered our failure. In this lecture, different level of prevention will be discussed providing keys for enhancing long term success of dental treatments.