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Unmet needs
Two stories recently crossed my desk to underscore the need for Prevora.
The first story in the Washington Post was about children and adults with Special Needs having limited access to effective preventive oral health services,
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Failure to keep up with the times
A family relative recently sent me an email about her dental plan and its failure to keep up with the times. read below:
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Millennials’ complex relationship with oral health services
The American Dental Association estimates that less than 1 in 3 Millennial (those in their 20s and 30s) visit the dentist each year – the lowest visit rate among any generation except for those over age 75.
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Oral inflammation = systemic inflammation
A new study in The Lancet reports a significant reduction in inflammatory markers in the blood after intensive non-surgical periodontal treatment (NSPT). Have a look at the above chart.
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Oral dysbiosis and COPD
Julie DiNardo, RDH (Hamilton, ON) reports a patient with long-term respiratory disease has recently improved lung function. the patient’s respirologist and the patient are unsure why the improvement. So the patient asked Julie if it has anything to do with Prevora, an antiseptic which she has been receiving in Julie’s practice for the past 5 years.
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Ping pong
…the (possibly deadly) game of bouncing patients between the dentists and the physician.
How So? Well, as explained as an example by a Forbes article, diabetics are considered the exclusive domain of physicians. Gum infections require a visit to the dentist. Yet these 2 chronic, inflammatory disease are interrelated.
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Rethinking geriatric oral healthcare
Hygienists often tell me their “horror stories” in serving older patients in retirement residences and nursing homes. These stories cover the waterfront – rampant decay among those with dementia, can’t get past the front door, gross inflammation in the mouth, preoccupation by the nursing team and unwillingness by the family to pay for better oral health until it is too late.
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Reducing medical costs
In this new age of containing medical costs, it seems the ultimate argument and purpose for oral health services is better overall health. For example, note this excerpt form a recent blog in Health Affairs, an influential journal in organizing the healthcare system: “Periodontal disease treatment can reduce medical costs in patients with diabetes, coronary artery disease, and cerebral vascular disease. Gum disease is strongly linked to poor cognitive brain function among patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The risk of developing dementia has been found to be higher in those with periodontitis than those without it.”
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Targeting high risk patients
A recent assessment from the Cochrane Reports concluded that regular hygiene visits for scaling and polishing (a routine procedure for preventing gum disease and tooth decay) had no clinical benefit. Here’s the data which supports this conclusion:
“Healthy” patients with no scaling and polishing over 3 years had 39.3% of their teeth with bleeding gums.
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