Oral Fitness

 Soldier Oral Fitness

Last Updated: August 08, 2018
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Soldier Oral Fitness 

Who has the most control over a Soldier's Dental Readiness?  It is the Soldier.  You control whether you get cavities or not.  Most oral disease is preventable with proper hygiene and diet.

What is Oral Health? It is the health of your entire mouth, not just your teeth. The mouth includes the teeth and the gums (gingiva), ligaments, muscles and jawbones. It also includes the tongue, the lining of the mouth and throat, salivary glands and lymph nodes.

What is Oral Fitness?  It means maximizing your oral health to keep yourself fit and ready. Just like a good motor sergeant uses a PMCS schedule to keep his/her vehicles running, you need to PMCS your mouth!

Are you Combat Ready? You could be making yourself vulnerable to tooth decay.  Check yourself by taking an online survey to determine your risk for tooth decay.

How can you maximize your Oral Fitness?  Learn more about how nutrition and oral health on the Nutrition and Oral Health section of the AKO My Dental web page .  Check out the Oral Fitness Related Sites page for information to improve your oral fitness.

Pregnancy and Your Oral Health (Sep 14)  Educational presentation on the changes pregnancy makes on oral health.

Department of Defense - Oral Health and Readiness Classification System

The purpose of this Classification System is to help commanders and Soldiers estimate any required treatment for dental emergencies during a deployment. Commanders can minimize personnel losses to treatment or MEDEVAC by ensuring that as many Soldiers as possible are Dental Class 1 prior to deployment. Soldiers with good oral health are Dental Class 1.

Class 1
  • Soldier has had a complete dental exam within the past year
  • Soldier does not require any dental care
Class 2
  • Soldier requires some type of dental care or re-check
  • Simple filling
  • Dental cleaning
  • Simple wisdom tooth extraction
Class 3
  • Soldier requires dental care as soon as possible
  • A dental emergency is likely to occur if the condition is not corrected
  • Badly decayed teeth
  • Severe gum disease
  • Root canal
  • Painful or diseased wisdom tooth
  • Soldier is not deployable
Class 4
  • Soldier requires a complete dental exam
  • Disease status is unknown
  • Soldier is not deployable