TeethRemoval.com in the Scientific Literature

Readers of this blog may sometimes not take the scientific merit of this site very seriously. Even so the site attempts to provide some up to date research on wisdom teeth (also known as third molars), dentistry, and other topics in medicine. In the past years several pages of this site including http://www.teethremoval.com/complications.html and http://www.teethremoval.com/dental_deaths.html have been cited in scientific article publications and posters. I wanted to draw attention to three instances of this occurring. First, an instance of citing the complications page came in an article titled “Time to Remove Your Wisdom Teeth!?” written by Michelle G. Tran from University of California, Davis appearing in the Lent 2013 edition (vol. 18, University of Cambridge) of the Science in Society Review by the Triple Helix, pages 20 to 21. See http://camtriplehelix.com/archive/journal/issue/18.  This is the University of Cambridge site but it appears there are 18 universites that … Read more

Senate Report Calls for Removing Deceptive Corporate Dentistry Entities From Medicaid

Previously I have written an article titled Fraud and Abuse in Medicaid Clinics where a discussion was made that currently dentists have large amounts of debt when they graduate from school. This leads to them having to face potentially hard and difficult choices to pay their bills as they essentially become indentured servants. Recently Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Max Baucus (D-MT) published a 1517 page report in June 2013, titled “JOINT STAFF REPORT ON THE CORPORATE PRACTICE OF DENTISTRY IN THE MEDICAID PROGRAM.” This report is a very large PDF file (143 MB) and is available for download over at http://www.finance.senate.gov/library/prints/.  Don’t be intimidated by the size of the report though as it really is a bit over 30 pages with the rest of the 1400+ pages serving as an appendix. Hence, it is very readable. The report talks … Read more

Dental Cleanings May Reduce Stroke and Heart Attack Risk

A study in Taiwan looked at those who have had professional tooth scraping and cleaning performed and found that they had reduced risks of stroke and heart attack. The study showed that more frequent scraping/cleaning was associated with more reduced risk compared to never having teeth cleaned/scraped or occasionally having it performed. The study looked at over 100,000 people and found that if either a dentist or dental hygienist scraped and cleaned teeth those people in that group had a 24% lower risk of a heart attack and a 13% lower risk of a stroke when compared to those who never had a dental cleaning performed. The people in the study were followed for an average of 7 years. The study was conducted using data from the Taiwan National Health insurance data base. One of the researchers was Emily (Zu-Yin) … Read more