Wisdom Teeth

Sexual Assault in the Dental Chair

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I have reported previously on two separate oral surgeons and assault of women during oral surgery. You can find the articles at https://blog.teethremoval.com/oral-surgeon-sexual-assault-acquital/ and at https://blog.teethremoval.com/sex-offense-and-assault-after-surgery/. Another case has come to light of Benva Oshana Lazar who so far has been accused by 8 patients who have said of groping during office visits. This is currently being reported in MercuryNews. Similarly one of the patients accused the San Jose dentist of groping her during a wisdom teeth extraction procedure. One of the women who is alleging  sexual abuse is 14 years old. I wonder if the judge this time will also find the dentist not guilty because the women were on “propofol” during the dentist visits and a known side affect is “sexual hallucinations”. This is a ridiculous  claim and clearly if you are a patient at the dentist you … Read more

Animals Have Room for Wisdom Teeth

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An article recently posted by Popular Science http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-08/do-animals-have-wisdom-teeth suggests that animals have room for wisdom teeth. An evolutionary biologist named Leslea Hlusko of the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the shape of your jaw is partially determined by what you eat when you are growing up. Since unlike animals, humans cook all the meat they eat usually and do not just tear it off raw, jaws have become smaller in size. The article also suggests that if you eat a lot of raw carrots and other tubers as a child this may help to make the jaw larger when you get older and thus better accomedate your wisdom teeth so the wisdom teeth do not have to be removed.

Wisdom Teeth and Dentist Culture

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I found an interesting article today on how the “Culture of research led to changes in extraction of wisdom teeth.” The article addressed wisdom teeth removal surgery in the United Kingdom (UK) and how this has changed over time. An interesting tidbit is there were 130,000 surgical extraction procedures conducted in England and Wales in 1995.  By 2002, this number had fallen to less than 60,000. The reason was because of research and learning from evidence. There is no benefit to extracting  healthy impacted wisdom teeth since the procedure caries the risk of damage to facial nerves. It is unfortunate that a similar policy has not been implemented in the United States. On a lighter note, another website discusses deranged dentist names. It is not exactly clear were some of the readers are from, however, some of them are amusing. … Read more

Oral Surgeon Sexual Assault Acquittal

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Last month I reported on sexual assault and how it has crept up into some oral surgeons offices during wisdom teeth removal. Well, recently there was another sexual assault case against an oral surgeon in the courts. Dr. Robert J. Boyda was accused of sexual assault by 17 women who testified as such in trial. However, the judge determined that he believed the women “thought” they were sexually assaulted due to the drugs that they were on. One of the drugs was stated to have “sexual hallucinations” in rare cases. The drug in question is propofol. I question whether or not you can really test if a sexual hallucination is a side effect in rare cases. You would certainly need an honest surgeon. This of course raises the issue of whether or not you should have anesthesia when you undergo … Read more

Treating Gum Disease Helps Rheumatoid Arthritis

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Researchers from the Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine and University Hospitals of Cleveland recently reported that people who cure their gum disease can decreased their arthritic pain if they surrfer from rheumatoid arthritis. “It was exciting to find that if we eliminated the infection and inflammation in the gums, then patients with a severe kind of active rheumatoid arthritis reported improvement on the signs and symptoms of that disease,” said Nabil Bissada, D.D.S. According to Ali Askari, M.D., chair of the department of rheumatology at University Hospitals, “From way back, rheumatologists and other clinicians have been perplexed by the myth that gum disease may have a big role in causing systematic disease.” Askari and Bissada are part of a team of researchers that studied 40 patients with  periodontal disease and a severe form of rheumatoid arthritis. The … Read more