Involved in a wide array of oral care activities – being a dentist, an iTOP instructor, a partner of a private dental clinic, an international speaker and author – it’s clear that Prof. Camillo Anauate Netto is passionate about having the highest possible number of healthy mouths in Brazil. According to Prof. Netto, “prevention never goes out of style,” which is why he both follows and develops dental hygiene protocols himself to help prevent dental caries and other problems. Find out more in this short interview.
What routines do you find most critical for maintaining proper oral health?
Both an initial and then regular consultations with the dentist. The professional needs to guide a patient’s oral hygiene, and constantly monitor if it’s being done correctly and sufficiently. In addition to this, the dental professional should also check and correct any bad habits, and improve patients’ cleaning techniques.
According to the dental hygiene protocol, the following must be completed on a daily basis:
1. Proper toothbrushing
2. Interdental brushing
3. Using dental floss
4. Using a tongue scraper
I consider all these routines as critical and they need to be performed at the right intervals and with the right techniques.
What does the word prevention mean to you?
In my opinion, prevention is a set of measures or early preparations that help prevent damage to any structure of our body. Regarding oral health and prevention, we should focus on avoiding the damage that can be caused by a delay in removing dental biofilm. Simply put, the damage caused by skipping brushing. Prevention never goes out of style.
What is your “golden rule” or advice that you tell your patients often?
My golden rule is to know how to teach really thorough “proper” everyday brushing. And I think everyone should learn how to brush according to the Bass technique, what basically means:
1. Get a flat bristled ultra-soft toothbrush with a high density of bristles.
2. Give eight-to-ten movements to each tooth and on all dental surfaces.
3. Brush for a total of about eight minutes after main meals.
4. Complement brushing with the use of calibrated interdental brushes.
I call this protocol: “Safe against dental caries and periodontal disease”.
Welcome to the Billion Healthy Mouths Club
Proper prevention is the future of dentistry – that’s why we at Curaden launched the Billion Healthy Mouths Club – a community of dental professionals committed to the idea of having regular routines in prevention and a holistic approach to dentistry. is one of those dental professionals who shares these values, and we proudly present his experience and thoughts with other like-minded people from the field. Keep reading our Gently magazine to discover more interviews with forward-thinking professionals from around the world.
What’s the biggest challenge of your job?
The biggest challenge is to keep my patients with “zero dental caries”. To achieve that, it’s necessary to follow oral care practices that are effective, atraumatic and motivational.
What’s the thing that you like about your job the most?
To see the results! When I manage to transform a patient’s oral environment, keep it healthy, and feel that a patient accomplishes all their tasks in terms of improving their oral care.
What’s the biggest oral health myth that you fight against?
There are actually two. The first one is connected to interdental cleaning – I have to persuade patients to use all the instruments for interdental hygiene: dental floss and interdental brushes. And the second is that many patients think that mouthwash replaces oral care and using mouthwash is enough – and this is not true. I have to convince patients that mouthwash is only an addition to oral hygiene, not a substitute.
Prof. Camillo Anauate Netto
An instructor of iTOP (individually trained oral prophylaxis) in Brazil, Prof. Camillo Anauate Netto graduated in dentistry at the University of Mogi das Cruzes in 1978. He followed this with an MSc.Ph degree in operative dentistry, and enriched his knowledge during a residency in operative dentistry and biomaterials at the University of Minnesota, USA.
Today, he is teaching at the UNIMES Metropolitan University of São Paulo and São Leopoldo Mandic Dental School. He also works as a counsellor of the Regional Council of Dentistry of São Paulo and is also active in writing. He has published 70 papers, multiple book chapters, and two books together with the Brazilian group of operative dentistry teachers called Cariology and Dentistry – a Multidisciplinary Approach. He lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil.
Follow Prof. Camillo Anauate Netto on Instagram @anauatenetto to learn more about his activities.
