Remineralization of Dental Caries - Biomimetic Approach

Until recently, the conventional treatment concept for all carious teeth involved caries excavation and replacement with a restorative material. However, with decades of research, evolved the "minimally invasive" approach which incorporates detecting and treating these areas sooner, emphasizing on prevention, rather than the traditional surgical model. Despite dental caries being a preventable infectious disease, oral health promotion and prevention can fail due to many factors. The advanced cavitation of the carious lesion necessitates restoring the tooth with materials such as metals, composite resins and ceramics to replace the lost enamel or, even, dentin. However, modern dental materials to repair cavitated carious lesions are not compatible with biological tissues at the lesion/restorative material interface mainly because of their physical and chemical differences (elemental compositions and phases) compared to the natural tooth structure. Remineralization is the natural repair process for non-cavitated lesions. The aim of remineralization of a caries lesion is to make the previously demineralized tissue mineralize, and put mineral back into a lesion.