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June 2, 2009 | dentalproductsreport.com
Make it Pay

CariFree

The CariFree system offers patients a new level of wellness and a frontline defense to caries.

by Amanda LaBonar, Web Editor

Do you help your patients make smart shopping choices? With an aisle full of oral health products in supermarkets and drugstores, it’s up to you to help patients make sense of it all. And the right product might not even be on the shelf.

With caries incidence on the rise, dental professionals need to step in and help patients make the right choices in oral care wellness, prevention and homecare products.

“If you aren’t carrying products you believe in then you’re leaving your patient’s choice usually up to the company with the biggest marketing budget,” said Carri Cady, RDH, VP of Sales and Marketing for Oral BioTech (CariFree). “There are a lot products on the market that don’t have an evidence-base for effectiveness. We know they aren’t effective because if product A and B were working for everyone using them, people wouldn’t still be getting cavities.”

The CariFree system allows you to identify patients in your practice that are high risk for caries and help move them from a reparative model to a wellness and preventative model.

“If your dentist isn’t recommending products, I don’t know who should be,” Cady said.

A two-part system

CariFree is a two-part system, the first part includes a Caries Risk Assessment Form and the CariScreen that provides real-time, chairside biometrics. The second part includes at home products for treatment and prevention.

1. Diagnostic
“The idea behind risk assessment is that we need to move to a more medical model in dentistry where we’re looking at what factors contribute to our patient’s susceptibility to disease and once knowing those factors discovering if there are ways that we can treat the disease more predictably,” Cady said.

Cady recommends that dentists have every patient complete the risk assessment form and get screened with the CariScreen test. This allows them to identify all patients at risk who would benefit from the products – even for low risk patients who aren’t necessarily caries prone. It also gives dental professionals the information needed to recommend the proper treatment products to high-risk patients as well as identify low-risk patients who will benefit from maintenance products.

“The dentist also needs to find out what type of products their patients are using. Are those products really going to benefit their mouth long-term? Do they have therapeutic agents? Do they have alcohol and acidic bio products, that are really not benefiting them in anyway?” Cady said.

2. Treatment/Prevention
Once you’ve identified high-risk treatments there is a three-month treatment protocol. The products work to medically treat the bacterial population and restore the environment back to health, which is really the only way you’ll reduce their risk for future decay.

The line of products utilizes technologies based on what is known about the caries infection.

• Broad spectrum antimicrobial - fight again the range of potential pathogens.
• Oxidizing agent - effectively penetrate and dissolve the biofilm
• Neutral pH – elevate pH back to a neutral, basic range (caries is pH driven and dependent on an acidic environment)

“If your going to do restorative work for your patients, but then let them go out and use whatever products to maintain their oral health, you have the risk of less predictable outcomes for the dentistry you are doing,” Cady explained. “Their crowns and bridges are failing because of some acidic, abrasive product they bought over the counter and then you end up replacing that and having to answer questions to your patients about why your dentistry is not lasting.”

The degree to which you adopt the CariFree system is up to you. You can screen and then refer patients to the CariFree Web site for products or you can carry the products and refer based off of the patient’s history.

“We’re really just committed to finding what will be a good fit for your practice, and then helping you make that happen, as opposed to having just one cookie cutter program that everyone has to adopt 100%,” Cady said.

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