At Friends of Really Excellent Dentistry (FRED), we believe prevention is one of the best ways to improve the oral health of all Australians. We are an organisation that is focused on prevention across the lifespan, evidence, equity in health outcomes and using digital technology to improve health outcomes.

Even though as a disease, decay seems kind of obvious - as in it’s clearly about teeth rotting (no judgement with that term) - defining what tooth decay is, took a while and it has been a little hard to nail down.

Caries is the official name for the disease. So, caries = tooth decay.

This is a great question, the short answer is, it depends!

The question points to the observation that there is more to oral health than just cleaning teeth, which is not to say that cleaning teeth isn’t a great habit - it is. It’s just it doesn’t prevent everything, that goes wrong in mouths.

Coming soon..

Coming soon..