Caries Risk Assessment

¿Caries Risk¿ is defined as the probability that an individual will develop at least a certain number of carious lesions reacting a giver stage of disease progression during a specified time conditional on his/her exposure status remaining stable during the period in question. This is generally considered ¿high¿ or ¿low¿. ¿Caries risk assessment¿ is the identification of individuals at high risk for future caries. Assessment of caries risk is an important part of contemporary dental practice. Dental practitioners perform such assessments every day of their practicing lives. The patient should be made aware of their risk status so that they become involved in their preventive care. For dentists to practice preventive dental medicine, they need information about the caries-risk status of their patients. The validity of a caries-risk assessment can be evaluated as regards specificity, sensitivity, positive and negative predictive values. Thus the risk assessment can be tested for how well it correlates with the future disease.