An introduction to CAMBRA, Caries Management by Risk Assessment. Dentistry's new "Standard of Care".

CAMBRA: These first pages of the "CAMBRA Consensus Statement" are important to establish the credibility of this "standard" in dentistry from the importance and professional stature of those who are endorsing this consensus. (tapping this fiture twice will enlarge it enough to read it) As with first page, more of the most respected educators, scientific investigators and clinicians place their endorsement and approval on what this statement presents.

In 2007 a bold statement is made and endorsed by the deans and staff of major dental schools, some of the respected clinicians, lecturers and researchers in the nation.

As the quality and quantity of research findings accumulated, the previous statement by the US Surgeon General in his "National Call to Action to Promote Oral Health" that "safe and effective measures exist to "Prevent" ....Dental caries was superceded by the "CAMBRA Consensus" statement: Dental "Caries is both curable and preventable...."

The scientific findings which are the basis of this bold statement created a dynamic paradigm shift in all of dentistry. The basis of belief for "Traditional Dentistry" being the Plaque Theory basically proposed by Dr. Willoughby Miller in 1889 was reduced to "old dentistry" or "Traditional dentistry defined as 'drill-and-fill' dentistry" and the new standard was changing the methodology and attitude of using the "medical model" of analysis of risk factors to manage dental care rather than the treatment or "surgical" mode of managing dental disease.

For those of us well taught and practiced in Traditional Dentistry, reducing what we had been teaching for our entire careers to "myth" was a shocking experience. Even though we had not seen any change in the percentages of the population having dental decay for as much as 35 or more years, we still thought that doing fillings was helping managing disease. To actually be told that this approach had been considered "ineffective" had a ring of truth to it. To brush and floss our teeth to help control dental disease was compared to getting weeds out of our lawn by mowing the lawn....all you got was shorter weeds. It would take a careful chemotherapeutic intervention and "caries risk management"to make it happen based on the scientific breakthroughs of understanding about the dental "biofilm", specifically the "Cariogenic Biofilm" (causes dental decay). Even though we had fluoride taught to even be the panacea to dental disease, it was announced that it didn't have any significant reduction effect on dental caries.

May I invite you to see the power point production explaining CAMBRA and its relationship to "symptoms", "disease" and "risk factors", the "caries-g0-round" and a pictorial depiction of the overview of the very source of dental caries innoculated into a child's mouth and the progression into either cure or a cyclic experience with dental decay detection and it's expense.

I will be producing progressively more blogs in a chronological sequence to try to give you a brief introduction to understanding CAMBRA and giving you the foundation of "be cavity-free for life" that will change your life and the lives of all your family and friends for good.

Any questions as we go? feel free to call me at : 801 643-1812 or email me at: PatientsOwn@hotmail.com . Now on to the next chapter of CAMBRA....