Algorithmically Detecting Brain Abscess Caused by Dental Infection

An interesting article titled “Dental focal infection-induced ventricular and spinal canalempyema: A case report” appears in the World Journal of Clinical Cases written by Hang Xue an et al. (vol. 8, no. 14, pp. 3114-3121, July 26, 2020). A discussion is made of a case report of a 53 year old woman who developed a brain abscess caused by a dental infection and how an algorithm pathogenic sequencing technique was used for diagnosis. In the article, the authors discuss the 53 year old woman from China who presented to a hopsital in 2019. She had high blood pressure for 10 years that was not well controlled even though she was taking medication and also had dental cavities for the prior three years. When she arrived at the hospital she was in narcosis and had no autonomous respiration. She had Cerebrospinal … Read more

Reasons to Avoid Amoxicillin For Healthy Patients in Conjunction with Wisdom Teeth Surgery

An interesting article titled “Dental Care Professionals Should Avoid the Administration of Amoxicillin in Healthy Patients During Third Molar Surgery: Is Antibiotic Resistence the Only Problem?” appears in the 2016 edition of the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (vol. 74, pp.1512-1513) written by Aragon-Martinez et al. The article discusses some of the reasons why antibiotics such as amoxicillin should not be given to healthy patients having wisdom teeth extracted. The topic of whether or not to have antiobitics before or after wisdom teeth surgery has been discussed on this site before, see for example 1) Antibiotics for Dental Use Contributing to SuperBugs 2) Patient’s Perception of Antibiotic Need After Teeth Removal, and 3) The Effect of a Single Dose of Antibiotics Prior to Wisdom Teeth Surgery. In the article by Aragon-Martinez it is discussed how amoxicillin dosages for wisdom … Read more

Taking Antibiotics Before Dental Visits Unnecessary in the Majority of Cases and May Cause Serious Side Effects

Whether or not someone should or should not take any antibiotics prior to dental visits such as wisdom teeth surgery is often a question that comes up. The purpose of doing so would be to potentially prevent an infection from developing from teh dental procedure. Research spearheaded by a group at the University of Illinois at Chicago shows that in the majority of cases antibiotics given before dental visits are not needed and instead can lead to serious side effects. The researchers presented results in October 2019 during IDWeek 2019, which is the Infectious Diseases Society of America’s annual meeting conducted in Washington, DC. The researchers also presented results in an article titled “Assessment of the Appropriateness of Antibiotic Prescriptions for Infection Prophylaxis Before Dental Procedures, 2011 to 2015” published on May 31, 2019 in JAMA Network Open (Suda et … Read more

Unnecessary antibiotics for toothache

In the United Kingdom (U.K.) over half of all patients who visited their general practitioner (GP) with a dental problem in the last 10 years were not offered a long term treatment for their pain and instead were prescribed antibiotics. Some of these antibiotics were unnecessarily given. In a 10 year retrospective study published in the British Journal of General Practice researchers examined dental consultations and the resultant number of antibiotics prescriptions. The study found many patients are visiting their general practitioner rather than seeing their dentist, and that over half of these consultations resulted in antibiotics being prescribed. Many dental problems cannot be managed by a GP and this places an unnecessary burden on busy GPs. A severe toothache often needs an extraction or root canal which can only be undertaken by a dentist. The researchers were alarmed about the large amount of antibiotics being … Read more

Deadly Infection and Wisdom Teeth Removal

I found a short snippet from the Wharton School of Business. The article addresses Wharton’s 2010 Business Plan Competition. One of the teams in the article is called R2R Therapeutics. The motivation for the team was 2nd year Wharton MBA student Bee Rhee who almost lost his wife due to a bacterial infection that occurred after the removal of his wife’s wisdom teeth. His wife was given antibiotics and they were able to stop the infection and she is currently alive today. However this business plan from this team does highlight a growing concern in healthcare which has to do with bacterial which is becoming more and more resistant to antibiotics. R2R Therapeutics’ goal is to combat these drug resistant bacteria by focusing on a novel cationic steroid antibiotic called R2R-1 which will work to disrupt the cell membrane and … Read more