AVA Conference Adelaide 2016

Dental home care is critically important for maintaining dental health in our pets as well as for ourselves. As vets we are able to actively remove all tartar and plaque during a dental procedure but without effective follow up homecare it will all rapidly recur and drive the progression and/or development of periodontal disease. Unfortunately effective dental home care has historically had very poor owner compliance because it is harder to convince a dog or cat that brushing is a good idea compared with people, although my three year old is also yet to be convinced. There are several new products that have the potential to greatly improve compliance by making homecare easier and less time consuming. After a brief summary of the historically available options for dental homecare we will discuss what has become available over the last few years. How do these products work, what is the evidence that they do what they claim to do and how should they be incorporated into what we recommend for dental home care to pet owners