Clinical diagnostics and patient stratification for use in the dental office

Abstract

Diagnostics and prognostics in dentistry can be applied to stratify patients according to risk for individualized disease forecasting and, ultimately, targeting resources to maximize health outcomes. Traditional clinical measures of periodontal disease show a history of tissue destruction but are unable to determine biologic onset or initiation of infl ammation and fail to predict susceptibility to or progression of disease. The state of the art in periodontal diagnostics is point-of-care (POC) periodontal methods (use of microbial, protein biomarker, and genetic measures). POC methods may use lab-on-a-chip (LOC) devices to analyze oral fl uids such as saliva. This technology can be applied for patient risk stratifi cation and predictive modeling to optimize personalized care in the dental offi ce to target healthcare resources to those at highest risk.