208 Chapter 10 For a valid diagnosis of oral dryness, a combination of several objective and subjective diagnostic tools is warranted. However, in regular dental clinics, individual tools like the XI, Clinical Oral Dryness Score and RODI are currently rarely used, which may lead to a delay in diagnosis and incomplete or ineffective care. For this reason, most of the patients with dry-mouth problems are nowadays referred to specialized saliva clinics for diagnosis and further help. These saliva clinics are therefore overloaded with huge numbers of referred dry-mouth patients. In this light, and because of the high prevalence of xerostomia and hyposalivation, we envisage that there is a need for rapid and easy to use dry-mouth diagnostics for general dental clinics. A digital tool that combines current and new dry-mouth methods would likely make knowledge, specialty care and improved dry-mouth diagnostics within reach for a broader public. For this reason, we envisage a digital drymouth screening tool and/or diagnostic tool that consists of two parts. A first part should consist of a general part which registers relevant aspects of general health including health status, age, and sex, combined with questionnaires about dry mouth, stress, and psychological status. This part could be filled in by the patient, possibly at home. The second part should cover a clinical part that consists of extra-oral and intra-oral examination and/or saliva measurements which should be performed by an oral health professional. After both parts are filled in, all the information could be combined and presented in a schematic overview indicating the risk for dry mouth and the need of patients to be referred to a specialized saliva clinic (Figure 1 for a potential representation of the results). In this overview, suggestions about the possible dry-mouth interventions could also be processed. This tool would provide a clear overview of all available information and it prevents that information is missing that could influence the diagnosis or therapy. It would enable the clinician to present the collected information in a comprehensive way to the patient. When such a tool is implemented in general dental practice, a large number of patients could then be helped directly by their own dentist, without the necessity of referral to a specialised dry-mouth clinic.
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