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Costs of dental treatment

The cost of inaction on preventing oral diseases

British Dental Journal volume 236, page 967 (2024)Cite this article

Key points

  • Resources are scarce. To get the most out of the available resources, we need to make choices.

  • Bad choices about investments in preventing versus treating oral diseases means that we do not achieve the highest level of oral health that would be attainable with the available resources.

  • The cost of inaction on strengthening oral disease prevention is substantial.

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References

  1. Listl S, Grytten J I, Birch S. What is health economics? Community Dent Health 2019; 36: 262-274.

  2. Watt R G, Daly B, Allison P et al. Ending the neglect of global oral health: time for radical action. Lancet 2019; 394: 261-272.

  3. Fee P A, Riley P, Worthington H V, Clarkson J E, Boyers D, Beirne P V. Recall intervals for oral health in primary care patients. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2020; DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD004346.pub5.

  4. Listl S, Quiñonez C, Vujicic M. Including oral diseases and conditions in universal health coverage. Bull World Health Organ 2021; 99: 407.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Professor of Translational Health Economics; Oral Health Section, Heidelberg Institute of Global Health, Germany

    Stefan Listl

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  1. Stefan Listl
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Correspondence to Stefan Listl.

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Cite this article

Listl, S. The cost of inaction on preventing oral diseases. Br Dent J 236, 967 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41415-024-7555-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41415-024-7555-9

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