I have patients ask me on a daily basis whether or not they should be using a power toothbrush and if so, what kind. This is a very good topic for discussion since I believe incorporating a power toothbrush into the daily routine can benefit most people.

Power tooth brushes like the Oral B Braun and Philips Sonicare, have been steadily improving year after year. Today’s top power brushes remove, on average, 20-30% more plaque than standard manual brushing. This is a BIG difference and can greatly reduce your risk of gingivitis and gum disease.

The action of the power brushes vibrates the plaque and bio film layers to loosen them and the bristles mechanically sweep them away. The type of brush really depends on the individual, but should be a rechargeable type (sits on a charging base) and not the type that require standard batteries. The rechargeable type is much more powerful and has a much longer life.

Talk to your dental professional today about which brush is right for you. You can usually get the best deal on pricing when buying direct from your dentist.

Did you know that fluoride can reduce the risk of dental decay at any age? It’s true. Many of us have small areas on our teeth that have become slightly weakened or “demineralized” over the years due to the types of foods we eat and sometimes less than ideal brushing and flossing habits. While this is normal and typical for most adults, the process usually leads to costly cavities down the road. These weakened areas are referred to as “decalcification” of the enamel. What can we do to slow down this process and even reverse it? You guessed it. Fluoride! Fluoride flows into weaker areas of tooth enamel and strengthens or “remineralizes” it to make it more resistant to cavities. It’s like a coat of armor for your teeth!

Remineralizing enamel with the help of dental fluorides is an effective way to reduce your risk of dental decay. Keep in mind however; it is not a 100% guarantee for warding off cavities. A fluoride treatment in conjunction with optimal home care is your best defense.

At your next dental visit, ask about fluoride and if it’s right for you. Chances are, you could benefit from it. Fluoride is easy and safe to apply and normally quite inexpensive. If you have any questions or concerns regarding fluoride treatments, ask your dental professional or check out this link below.

Thanks for reading J

http://www.astdd.org/docs/Sept2007FINALFlvarnishpaper.pdf

Did you know that every hour of every day in America someone dies of oral cancer. Oral cancer is the sixth most common diagnosed form of cancer in the United States. Only half of the patients diagnosed with oral cancer will survive longer than five years and accounts for 8,000 deaths each year. This is often because oral cancer is difficult to visualize and diagnose in the early stages. Clinical signs of oral cancer present themselves at later stages which lead to a higher risk of death.

In early stages of oral cancer symptoms may be either absent or so minor that patients are unaware of its presence. One of the most important jobs of a dental professional is to screen patients for oral cancer at each and every visit. When oral cancer is discovered in late stages, the 5-year survival rate is only 20-30%. But when discovered in early stages the survival rate leaps to 80-90%. The use of the Velscope as an identifying tool can allow the dental professional to catch potentially cancerous lesions at a much earlier stage, thus increasing survival rate.

Tobacco is number one on the list of risk factors. At least 75% of those diagnosed are tobacco users. When tobacco is combined with heavy use of alcohol, your risk is significantly increased. You may not think that you are at risk for oral cancer because you don’t use tobacco or drink excessive amounts of alcohol, but did you know that studies show that if you are sexually active you are at an increased risk. The human papilloma virus, HPV 16 and 18, have been implicated in some oral cancers. HPV is a common sexually transmitted virus, which infects 40 million Americans. Of those infected, 1% will have the HPV 16 strain, which is a causative agent in cervical cancer, and now is linked to oral cancer. All adults should have an annual oral cancer screening. A quarter of oral cancer victims are non smokers, don’t drink, and have no lifestyle factors to increase their risk.

The oral cancer exam is a two step process. The first step of the exam is a clinical exam, where your dentist will look for lesions in the oral cavity with the naked eye and use palpation to feel for any lumps or bumps in the neck and face. The second step is doing an exam with the Velsope. The Velscope is non-invasive procedure. It emits a safe blue light into the oral cavity, causing the oral tissue to fluoresce.  Cancerous and pre-cancerous tissue fluoresces differently than normal healthy oral tissue and typically appear as irregular, dark areas that stand out against the otherwise normal, green fluorescence pattern of the surrounding healthy tissue.

If the dentist detects anything of concern during the exam, the next step would be to take a biopsy of the area. The biopsy will be sent out to an oral pathologist, who will examine it and make a diagnosis. In the worst case the diagnosis could be oral cancer, but in most cases the diagnosis will be pre-cancer, or some other much less serious form of abnormality.

At our office, our patients get an annual Velscope exam to ensure early detection and diagnosis of oral cancer. At your next visit to your dental office, make sure your oral health is being taken seriously and ask for a Velscope exam.

Jenny Haskett EFDA

A patient in our practice recently gave me a copy of an article in the Reader’s Digest from April, 2010. As a dental hygienist, I am aware of the many health correlations and benefits to regular, daily flossing as an adjunct to good oral homecare. But I was amazed to learn that my patients who have been diagnosed with periodontal “gum” disease are at increased risk of diabetes. A recent study of nearly 3,000 adults from New York University’s Colleges of Dentistry and Nursing showed 93 percent of those who had periodontitis were at high risk for diabetes, compared with just 63 percent of those without it. These numbers are astounding to me and I intend on passing the information on to all my patients whom I treat for periodontal disease and those who are at high risk for it.  If you have been diagnosed with any form of gum disease, it is highly recommended that you ask your medical provider to have your blood sugars checked immediately. Diabetes is often void of symptoms so early diagnosis is the best way to avoid long-term complications.

Carly, RDH

There is much controversy surrounding the use of amalgam for filling teeth. You can find many arguments and studies stating amalgam is a health hazard and shouldn’t be used, while there are also a number of studies that state amalgam hasn’t been linked to any health issues. I have been a dental assistant for 7 years and have seen first hand what amalgam can do to teeth. There are a number of concerns that I have, one being the damage amalgam has on teeth and the second being the way we dispose of amalgam.

To place an amalgam filling, you have to make undercuts to the inner walls of the tooth to have it stay in. To make those undercuts, you have to cut away healthy tooth structure. Amalgam is packed into the tooth and will harden up like a rock. A tooth will naturally flex and give a little. Overtime the amalgam filling will expand causing hairline fractures throughout the tooth structure and leak bacteria down around the filling causing decay that can go undetected until it gets big enough to see on the x-ray. Eventually those hairline fractures will get bigger causing the tooth to break, losing an entire cusp (or side wall), off the tooth. I hear those famous little words from my patients all the time. “I wasn’t eating anything hard, just a sandwich.” What many patients don’t know is the tooth was most likely already cracked and it doesn’t take much to bite down just right and then that piece of tooth becomes part of your meal. In many cases where a tooth has cracked and lost a whole cusp or has a lot of decay, the fix is placing a crown. If the crack is too extensive and affects the nerve of the tooth, the tooth may also need to have a root canal. This will be much more costly to the patient then a filling or crown.       

We take a number of old silver fillings out which have broken down and need to be replaced. Recently there have been more regulations put in place to ensure that our waste water doesn’t contain mercury amalgam. DEQ states that we have to separate the amalgam from the waste water before going out to the sewer and contaminating the waste water stream. We take all necessary precautions to prevent exposing ourselves and our patients to mercury vapor while removing amalgams. My thought is, if the amalgam isn’t safe enough to go straight out to the sewer, then why would I want it contaminating my body?

We have been amalgam free for over 10 years at our office. Amalgam is a filling material of the past. Now days there are far better materials used to fill teeth that offer more benefits to the tooth. In our office we use only composite filling materials, or what is also referred to as “tooth colored fillings.” Composite is a plastic filling material that will flex and give with the tooth. Composites are bonded in, so there is no concern of bacteria leaking down around the filling. Once a composite is bonded in it will pull the walls of the tooth together to strengthen it. They are radiopaque, “shows up white in x-rays” which means we can more easily detect decay around them on an x-ray. They also contain fluoride to make the tooth structure stronger and more resistant to getting decay.

 Jenny, EFDA

If you think about how much your life has changed over the past 30 years, think about how much the practice of dentistry has changed.  In 1977, when I graduated from The Ohio State University College of Dentistry, all fillings, even white fillings, were mechanically locked into the tooth.  It was before “bonding” was invented.  Silver/Mercury fillings were considered the material of choice for filling posterior teeth, or places where esthetics weren’t of primary concern.  If you did place a white filling, you had two parts to it, like epoxy, and had to add equal amounts of both parts for the filling to set up.  Light activation of filling material was just being introduced.  The Nuvalite, an ultra-violet light, was the first light activated system to be introduced.

X-rays were taken on celluloid film and processed in “dip tanks”, tanks with the developer & fixer solutions in them.  To get a better look at an x-ray, you had to use magnifying glasses, you couldn’t enlarge the film.  Now, with digital radiography, we take radiographs using 1/3 of the radiation as when we use celluloid film.  We can digitally enlarge the image so that we can get a real good look at the image. It is not surprising how much more detail we can see in a 19” image vs. a 2” film.  We can e-mail the image to another practioner without losing the diagnostic quality of the image, and we can show the image on more than 1 computer at the same time, so that as many people as necessary can be looking at the image at the same time.

“Esthetic” crowns were porcelain fused to gold.  The gold always managed to show through & produce dark lines along the gums of the tooth.  Now we have over 4 different types of all porcelain crowns to choose from.  They are translucent so that the natural color of the tooth shows through.  They are bonded to the remaining tooth structure creating a stronger joint.  We can bond porcelain onlays on the tooth and conserve the natural tooth structure.

30 years ago, there was more emphasis on surgery to treat problems.  If a root canal failed, then you did surgery on the end of the root, if you had periodontal (gum) problems, then you did surgery right away to correct the problem.  Now, surgery is thought of more as a last resort.  If a root canal fails (& they do fail at times), then first choice is to retreat the root canal.  With periodontal problems, do a deep cleaning (root planing) first & see how the areas respond to the deep cleaning, then do surgery only in those areas that did not respond well to the first treatment.

I want everyone to know that like everything else in our lives, dentistry is changing & evolving quickly.  I can’t wait to see what the next 30 years bring us!