Erosive Tooth Wear Risk Assessment

An important step towards prevention of ETW should be the identification of those individuals who are at risk of ETW through risk assessment. Risk assessment is the clinical process of identifying and estimating the probability of an individual developing new erosive lesions or progression of existing lesions during a specified period.²⁵ This would enable the identification of the individual etiologic factors contributing to the patient’s existing ETW, which would provide the basis to explain to the patients how to prevent their ETW, and to communicate and facilitate needed change in behavior to prevent the problem. Risk assessment can be performed using an established ETW risk assessment tool, which guides the user through the most common risk factors associated with dental erosive wear, and when combined with the Basic Erosive Wear Examination (BEWE)²⁶ or other similar scoring system, leads to a final decision on patient’s risk status.²⁵