Perfect recal

Having just returned from a week’s leave, my first appointment was to attend a conference on the management of caries. It made for a few hours delay in attending to the lurking email mountain. I’m not sure which is worse: the mad rush to get everything done before you take a break, or dealing with the consequences on your return.

Anyway, the talk was of recall intervals. In the new era of risk assessment and individualised patient care plans (which I’m very much in favour of, by the way) there are, it seems, no end of systems which can be devised to guide the clinician.

It makes perfect sense that a ‘high risk’ patient should return more frequently than the one who has never experienced interventive care, has excellent oral hygiene and a balanced diet. And the evidence shows that a patient (including such a paragon of dental virtue) who experiences a single primary carious lesion should be categorised as ‘high risk’.