Rural dentistry: Is it an imagination or obligation in community dental health education?

During the past two decades, epidemiologic studies in less developed or developing countries have clearly reported that caries prevalence shows the distinctive patterns over the word, even though it is declining in many developed countries. Due to huge rural districts where arrival is problematic and ineffective dental and preventive care centers in most suburban districts, there has been significant difference between the different parts of the communities to provide dental care service, and unfortunately the sole preventive measure has been limited with the advising of using the tooth brush and paste. The problems are usually arisen not only from the inadequacy of trained personnel but also from the absence of an effective economic and pragmatic system which aims to effectively dispense the dental service to all over the country. For this reason, the basic aim of dental care should be to carry out the many dental services in a multidisciplinary manner within the first appointment and to serve the people at their own homes and/or districts. Clearly, the needed multidisciplinary dental care system can lead to a new educational doctrine for rural dental practice. This versatile and practical training program based on specific perceived needs of a specific population(s) could need a new educational program. So, various preventive and/or restorative procedures included by this new doctrine could be named as “rural dentistry.” In this review, with the examples from the many in vivo studies carried out under rural conditions over the world, the probable practices in this specific dental doctrine have generally been exemplified.