 Hello everybody. Happy studying. Now today we're going to talk about dental carries. So I had actually uploaded this exact PowerPoint. This is new. I just finished it off today. Plus a lecture inside our board exam prep Academy course. So if you're interested in learning more every day new topics, then definitely check out the course link is down below. So, but let's just jump into dental carries here. Okay, so these are terms, but first of all, we're going to talk about dental carries. So in certain terms, you have to know for the exam, I'm going to run through them quickly. Basically you need to know that fermentable carbohydrates, you know, aren't good. We're talking about converting things into sugar. If there's sugar, it's going to cause cavities. You need to know the difference between sodium fluoride. There's a neutral fluoride, you need to know the difference between sodium fluoride and sodium fluoride. And you need to know the different types of cavities because those are actually going to help to re mineralize. There's different types of cavities, which we're going to talk about. There are incipients. Those are something that you need to know. Those are cavities you keep an eye on. You don't necessarily have to fix the different types of bacteria. So think basically the mutants streptococci, which causes cavities in a sense. If there's no bacteria, there's no acids. There's no cavities. The oral biofilm, also known as plaque, and we talk about pellicle, which I feel go hand in hand. You need pellicle before plaque. Dental caries. As I just mentioned, you guys, you need to be responsible for the two main types of bacteria, the mutant streptococci, also the lactobacilli. These two, again, the most important when you see these, you need to know that has to do with caries. Nothing else. It doesn't have to do with gingivitis, perio, none of that has to do with caries. You should also remember, remember, caries is infectious and it's a disease. I tell this to my patients. I say you have actually a disease in your mouth. This is why I'm talking about taking care of your mouth better, making sure to brush twice a day using mouthwash, using a water pick to clean in between the teeth, seeing the dental hygienists to get those teeth clean, because without that being maintained, without that being treated, essentially, you have a disease in the mouth. Plaque and pellicle. So pellicle needs to form before plaque. Pellicle basically happens right away. So it's that thin, clear. You might not even see it, but you can feel it with your tongue. Your teeth just don't feel perfectly clean, right? And then plaque forms on top of the pellicle. So if the pellicle isn't brushed away, if you're eating more food, all of that, then plaque forms. Plaque is that sticky, white, off-yellow stuff. If plaque is left there, then you have tartar, you have calculus. Enamel. So enamel is important when we're talking about caries, because you need to know that enamel, your tooth, there's crystals. So they can only do so much. But once we're eating acids, eating sugars, it attacks those crystals which start to break down the tooth. Enamel isn't perfect, it's going to break down. Once it breaks down, you can get cavities. So the caries process, I love to talk about this. You have a susceptible tooth, so you need a tooth. You're not eating the right diet, or you're eating a lot of sugars. The third one is there has to be bacteria. Without bacteria, you cannot get cavities. This is basically what I tell my patients. We all have teeth, but if you're not eating a lot of sugar, or if you're limiting sugar, you have a lesser chance of getting cavities. And if there's no bacteria, meaning there's no sugar, then you can't get cavities. But, you know, we can't be perfect. But I let them know within five minutes, basically whatever you're eating is trying to attack your teeth. That's the sad truth of it. If you're drinking water, that's going to help to neutralize those acids. If the acids are neutralized, it's harder to get cavities. So I say drink a lot of water, keep drinking that water. Carious lesions, there's different types. You can basically get cavities anywhere on a tooth, including the root surface if it is exposed. You can get a cavity around a melgum filling, a composite filling, a crowned bridge. I mean, you can basically get a cavity anywhere. Anywhere there's still a mammal and the natural tooth. For example, you can't get a cavity on a crown, but you can get a cavity around the crown if it's not seated properly on the actual tooth where it's trying to cover, but maybe it's not seated properly. So you can get cavities anywhere. The important thing to note about how cavities form is basically whatever it's doing is eating away at the tooth. That is a term called demineralization, but then we want things to become remineralized. So if somebody's cavity prone, if they have soft enamel, we're going to tell them we need to help you to do things to your mouth to allow those teeth to get remineralized. That is where the proper toothpaste comes into play. The proper mouthwash, drinking lots of water. I tell patients they should have a toothpaste with xylitol and xylitol and sodium fluoride. Sorry guys, I had something stuck in my throat there. Sodium fluoride, so xylitol and sodium fluoride. Xylitol helps to limit the bacteria, but sodium fluoride helps to make the enamel stronger, protecting those areas that might already have a cavity or are cavity prone. Then we talk about different stages. The first stage is the incipient carries that I talked about. That can get better or worse or stay the same. You don't necessarily need a filling unless it gets worse. That's the second stage where you need a filling and rampant carries can happen, meaning cavities can spread easily. You have to talk to that patient about doing everything, all of this to really help to limit cavities. I put the words saliva in here, because if there's not a lot of saliva, it's easier to get cavities, because saliva actually helps to coat the mouth to protect the teeth. I just thought that I would mention that to you guys. Here's the different stages of how a cavity happens. If you catch it in the early stage, that's awesome, but if you let it get worse, it can get worse and worse and worse. If a cavity is in the pulp, that's when you need a root canal or to have the tooth pulled. Early childhood decay, a child that has a lot of cavities, basically you guys, not good. I see this often. This can happen if the child is eating a lot of sugar and not brushing their teeth, or if they're going to bed with their milk or with cookies and then falling asleep. All of that sugar is sitting in their mouth for like eight hours, or however long they sleep for, so not good. Saliva. I talk about saliva with my students more so here. Just basically saliva protects the mouth. There's a lot of antibacterial properties, because there's proteins in our saliva that help to neutralize acids. So saliva is needed the more the better, but if you just don't have a lot, some people don't. There are things we can give you to help that mouth that have attracted less bacteria, such as a mouthwash or xylitol tablets. How do we know you have carries? These are all the different things we can do to really check if you have cavities or not. Canberra, I talk about this with my students. It's just a way to really help to identify your patients. Are they at risk for cavities, low, moderate, high, or extreme? These are the things we look for. Obviously, if they have white spots, they have cavities at every appointment. It's very easy. They have sticky spots. There's a lot of stuff like all of this. They're going to be more and more cavity prone. Things that we can do to protect them, to protect the mouth. These are all of those things. The different types to help to re-mineralize. Meaning, if there's tiny cavities, we can actually stop them from getting worse. If there's no cavities, we can protect the teeth, make them stronger. These are the different things we would use in a dental office. Neutral sodium fluoride is the most common. The acid-lated phosphate fluoride, that is in the foam that we would typically put in trace, but we don't do that as much anymore depending on the office. Because neutral sodium fluoride just seems to work a lot better. That's what all of the articles say. Everybody says they've noticed a difference from switching to neutral sodium fluoride. It works better. So why would you use something that's been proven to not work as well? It's cheaper. That's why. But I always use neutral sodium because yes, it's more expensive for me to purchase, but it's helping my patients and doing a better job. I'm going to talk about the different classes. Talking about carries. These are the different classes. Here's a good picture for you. I talk about this a lot more in my board exam prep academy. So definitely check out the link if I'm moving too fast for you and if you want to learn more. This is just kind of a review for you. Okay. These are the different stages. I'm going to talk a little bit more about this. I'm going to be doing more or it's going to look like this very, very soon. So there's moderate advanced severe. This is incipient. So incipient is very tiny. Moderate advanced and severe. Prevention. Again, you guys talking to patients about prevention. Education goes a long way. We talked about all of that already. Nutrition basically sugars equal cavities. Sweeteners aren't sugars. They're not. They're not. They're not. They're not. They're not sweet except for Xylitol. Xylitol is the one sweetener. That's amazing for cavity prevention. Monitor diet. A lot of parents. I go to talk to the parents about, you know, what their child might be eating. Cause they have like five cavities at, at like age three. And they're like, Oh, I don't know. They're just eating normal. Well, they're just eating normal. So that gives me a good indication. And they can look at that too. And say, Oh, wait a minute, they have a like five. Well, not five. Okay. They have two cookies every night before bed. And then they don't brush. Maybe that's why they're getting cavities. So it's a great way to really show the parents too. Educating. So I don't necessarily tell us to patients. I don't say you're okay to only brush once a day because platforms after 24 hours. No, this is why we tell them to brush twice a day. You can't brush perfectly. You can't. I can't. That's why I brush like three times a day. Cause I want my teeth as clean as possible and as healthy as possible. Important education. Talking about all of those with patients is so important. That's for my board exam prep academy students. But yeah, you guys, I hope this helped. If you want to learn more, we talk about a new topic every single week from Friday to Friday, we go through new topics this week in the board exam prep academy. We're going through carries and nutrition because it goes hand in hand. If this is something you would like to learn more about. And if you're taking your, your exams soon and you want me to help you prep for it. You need the VIP board exam prep academy, you guys, please take a look. You want to pass your exam the first time and I'm here to help. Please click like if you had liked this. Thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you guys in the next one.