Arrested dental caries
Teeth with arrested dentinal caries
Description: The surface of the tooth will be hard when a ball ended probe is drawn across it.
Images show primary teeth with arrested carious lesions.
Aim: To maintain the arrested state of the tooth.
Any carious lesion, at any stage, can arrest. However, as there have been conditions in the mouth previously that have led to the initiation and progression of caries, maintaining the state of arrest relies on proactive intervention.
Carry out site-specific prevention or non-restorative cavity control.
These teeth often appear black but may also have a honey yellow appearance. The key is the hardness of the dentine. Teeth with active dentinal caries will be soft, moist and friable to the touch. The non-restorative cavity control approach to these teeth must involve the parent/carer and it is important that the tooth/lesion is a cleansable shape.