TREATING RESTORATIVE DENTISTRY TO HEALTH

The concepts that underpin much of dental practice need refocusing so as to accommodate the many scientific advances that hace been made in recent years in understanding oral disease processes and their managem ent. 'Treatment' should come to mean what it says, namely the curing o f diseases - and much of this cn only be acomplished by non-invasive m eans. Restorative procedures should be seen simply as prosthetic, maki ng up for lost tissues. The sequence of events with respect to caries should usually be: diagnosis followed by treatment, and then the optio n of restoration if appropriate. In order to achieve this state of aff airs for the whole population, I believe it will be necessary ot strea m dental undergraduates so that, while a portion learn restorative tec hniques and become licensed ot practise them, the remainder concentrat e on the non-restorative aspects of dentistry, having a special emphas is on the prevention and non-invasive 'treatment' of oral and dental d iseases, including caries, on a community scale. This latter group of dentists would not be licensed to undertake restorative procedures.