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Atraumatic Restorative Treatment to the
Rural Population
A GOI-WHO
Collaborative Programme 2006-07
India is the second biggest country in the world with a population of
approximately 1-00 billion; India
is providing 7000 dentists per annum. Yet the dentist: population ratio is
1:30,000. India
cannot afford to spend on the highly expensive dental restorative treatment.
In order to bring down the disease prevalence and severity, the only
alternative is to implement organized and Oral Health preventive programme.
Considering the problem of delivery of oral care to such a populous country,
the ART approach, which does not require sophisticated and expensive dental
equipment, might be appropriate for the management of dental caries in India.
One of the preventive
restorative treatment concepts that had emerged in the dental literature in
the mid nineties was the Atraumatic Restorative Treatment (ART) approach. ART
is one of the existing minimal intervention approaches that removes
demineralised tooth tissues using hand instruments and restores the cleaned
cavity and adjacent pits and fissures with an adhesive filling material,
usually a glass ionomer cement. No electricity is required and local
anaesthesia is rarely asked for by people treated by the ART approach
(Frencken et al, 1996).
In communities without
access to traditional dental treatment, alternative measures for treating
caries are being used. One alternate is the Atruamatic Restorative Treatment,
which fits modern concepts of preventive and restorative oral care in that it
emphasize prevention and minimal invasiveness in treatment.
In patients with great
treatment needs, an attempt is made to improve the oral status with a view to
arrest the destructive process of the
disease and favorably alter the micro biota. ART has become one of the
treatment modalities available to oral health workers in managing dental
caries.
The present study assesses
the survival of ART restorations in deciduous and permanent teeth. View full document>…
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