Dentition Score Inversion for Patient Communication
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current dental indices, such as DMFT and DMFS, do not effectively communicate the improvement in dental health status to patients, as they only increase with treatment needs and do not decrease with successful treatment, lacking utility in patient communication and compliance.
Innovation Solution
Development of caries and prosthetic scores that increase with treatment needs and decrease with effective treatment, allowing for a simple numeric representation of dental health status, enabling better patient understanding and management of oral health.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If traditional dental indices (DMFT, DMFS) are used to describe dentition status, then the indices can quantify the prevalence of caries, but the indices only increase with treatment needs and do not decrease with successful treatment, making them ineffective for patient communication
Solution Approach 1:
The patent inverts the traditional dental indexing approach by creating scores that decrease with treatment success rather than increasing. The caries score and prosthetic score are designed to reflect improvement over time, where lower scores indicate better dental health status. This inversion makes the scores meaningful for patient communication and compliance, as patients can understand their improvement through treatment.
2Ease of operation
If simple numeric scores are used to describe dental health status, then patient understanding is improved, but the scores must accurately reflect both treatment needs and treatment success
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the dental health status into two distinct scores: a caries score that measures decayed, missing, and filled teeth, and a prosthetic score that measures missing teeth and prosthetic replacements. This segmentation allows each score to focus on specific aspects of dental health, improving both accuracy and ease of communication with patients.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the parameter direction from traditional indices that only increase with treatment needs to scores that can decrease with treatment success. The caries score and prosthetic score are designed to reflect improvement over time, where lower scores indicate better dental health status. This parameter change maintains simplicity while improving measurement precision for tracking treatment outcomes.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods, systems, algorithms, and uses for dentition scores having clinical applicability for an individual patient are described herein. The scores increase as a condition worsens and decrease with treatment. The score can be used to communicate the status of a patient's dentitions to the patient, to an insurer, or to another health care professional.