To conclude, it should be evident from this brief review that confusion remains concerning concepts of disease, oral health, health and the quality of life and the ways in which they are related. The discourse on oral health is also often confused. First, health is often defined in terms of the absence of disease; second; the mouth rather than the person is often the focus of the analysis and, third, ambiguity remains concerning the essential unity of what we call oral health and general health. Consequently, further work to clarify these concepts and their theoretical underpinnings is indicated.
Since some of these conceptual problems can be resolved, and medical and socioenvironmental approaches reconciled, through the use of causal models of disease and its consequences, the exploration of such models with respect to oral disorders is a priority and essential to furthering our understanding what we call oral health