Do I Really Need to Remove My Wisdom Teeth?

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A few days ago an article titled “Do I Really Need to Remove My Wisdom Teeth? appeared in Community Magazine by Jacques Doueck located at http://www.communitym.com/article.asp?article_id=101936  The article opens with “I was prompted to write this article because of two adult patients who suffered severe damage, infection, and swelling because they delayed taking out wisdom teeth. One of them actually broke his jaw because of a wisdom tooth that should have been removed long ago. The patient, 48 years old, lost both teeth and the fractured jaw forced him to eat baby food for six months. The other patient was 65 years old and had to have the wisdom tooth and the adjacent molar removed.” This opening in this article kind of cracks me up because both of these patients are quite old, especially the 65 year old. Of course we … Read more

Fraud and Abuse in Medicaid Clinics

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I have previously discussed on this blog how students graduating from medical school have an average debt of around $158,000 and the average debt of those graduating from undergraduate college is around $27,000 in the U.S.  In fact, the video called College Conspiracy http://blog.teethremoval.com/college-conspiracy-and-united-states-hyperinflation/ profiles a dentist who is stuck with with high loans from school  (around the 11 minute mark). One quote appearing in this video is “…as soon as you get out of school you are indentured for life.” This figure below showing the inflation cost of college tuition (in blue), medical care (in red), and general inflation (in black) from http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/College.html pretty much tells more of the story. In fact I would argue that college tuition costs and medical costs are correlated with each other and you should be able to calculate some sort of correlation coefficient. An interesting article titled “Our Junior Colleagues … Read more

Wisdom Teeth Advice and New Dental Schools

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A new article in the New York Times titled “Wisdom of Having that Tooth Removed” written by Roni Caryn Rabin published September 5, 2011, is an interesting articles for those considering whether or not to have healthy wisdom teeth extracted. The article is located at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/health/06consumer.html The article explores some of the issues regarding whether or not you should or not have have healthy wisdom teeth extracted. The article discusses how the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (AAOMS) held a press conference back in October of 2010, http://www.aaoms.org/docs/media/third_molars/key_findings.pdf (dead 10/14/19), in which one of the key findings was “Retained, asymptomatic wisdom teeth are eventually extracted between 25% and almost 70% of the time.” The author of the New York Times article questioned AAOMS on this statement which appeared on their website. The response from AAOMS was “Yet when … Read more

Swimming and the Potential Harmful Effects on Your Teeth

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Recently an article has appeared on DrBicupsid.com titled Swimming in acidic pool nearly destroys man’s teeth written by Rob Goszkowski and posted on September 6, 2011, located at http://www.drbicuspid.com/index.aspx?sec=sup&sub=rst&pag=dis&ItemID=308363 The article describes a case of a 52 year old man who nearly lost the enamel of his teeth in just 5 month by swimming regularly at his home pool. In fact, while it is widely appreciated that exercising regularly is good for your health you should consider the potential harm of any sort of new exercise program and yes this includes swimming and even walking. This man was suffering from hemangiomas in his liver and was told by his doctor to stop jogging so he decided on his own that he would take up swimming and in fact would do so for 90 minutes a day at a pool in … Read more

How to Improve Your Chances to Win a Dental Malpractice Lawsuit

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Tom over at OralAnswers has previously written a post on how to win a dental malpractice suit http://www.oralanswers.com/2010/07/sue-your-dentist-and-win-malpractice-lawsuit/ I also discuss on my U.S. Legal System and Medical Malpractice page http://www.teethremoval.com/legal_system_medical_malpractice the 4 elements you must prove to have a chance at winning a malpractice suit. (1) the doctor to provide a standard of care to patients in the locality where the treatment occured (legal duty) (2) the doctor breached that standard of care (3) an injury causing damages (4) the breach of the standard of care was the proximate cause of the injury. Now as is quite clear on my site I disagree with the current ‘standard of care’ of removing healthy wisdom teeth in young healthy patients in the U.S. This is not the standard of care in the U.K. I wanted to touch on an additional element in … Read more