Diagnosis of Dental Caries-Old and the New

This book focuses on the recent and traditional diagnosing aids used for caries detection. Dental caries which is prevelant worldwide may be defined as a dynamic disease process, in which early lesions undergo many demineralization and remineralization cycles before being expressed clinically.1 It is a complex disease, defined as a progressive, irreversible, microbial disease affecting the hard parts of the tooth exposed to the oral environment, characterized by demineralization of inorganic constituents and destruction of the organic constituents thereby leading to a cavity formation. As long as the dynamic equilibrium between the mineral content of the tooth-oral fluid and the microbial content of the biofilm are maintained, the entire sequence remains within the boundary of a physiological process, where loss and gain are equalized.