Asaad Javaid Mirza^1,, Maaz Asad², Merwah Berkth³, Ammar Ahmed Siddiqui⁴

Introduction: Dental caries has long been considered as an irreversible disease of hard tissues of the teeth and was treated accordingly using drill and fill technique. Extensive research work done in the field of cariology has proved it wrong. Current strategies to manage caries include assessing patients’ caries risk, controlling bacterial level in saliva, using various therapeutic agents, reminerlizing incipient carious lesions and finally restoring the cavitated lesions. In Saudi Arabia, dentists of various nationalities, especially from Asia and Africa come to work in the ministries of health and higher education. It is astonishingly observed that most of these dentists including Saudi national dentists continue to treat caries by traditional drill & fill technique. This study was done with an objective to assess percentage of the dentists following current pathways of caries management. Material & Methods: A user-friendly questionnaire was thoroughly prepared and distributed to dental schools in Saudi Arabia and to dentists working in ministry of health and in private clinics and hospitals consisting of 13 queries about clinical implication of current caries-treating strategies. Results: 239 Arabic speaking and 276 non-Arabic speaking dentists working in Saudia participated in the study by filling out the questionnaire sent to them. The data was analyzed using SPSS 17. Conclusion: Most of the participating dentists working in Saudia Arabia having different nationalities treat caries by surgical intervention and do not follow currently recommended strategies.

caries management by risk assessment, caries preventive strategies