Six Tips for Dental Professionals to Improve Their Mental Health

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Dental professionals face numerous stressors in their day to day work including reimbursement concerns, practice management issues, financial pressures, paperwork demands, uncooperative patients, physical demands inherent in delivering oral health care, and tightly booked schedules. Dental professionals often have personal characteristics like perfectionism and prioritization of others’ needs that in conjunction with the day to day work stressors can lead to dental professionals vulnerable to distress, burnout, and mental health disorders. This stress endemic is discussed in the article “Anxiety, depression, and the impact on dental health care workers,” written by Maria L. Geisinger and Stacey L. Dershewitz appearing in the Journal of the American Dental Association (vol. 153, no. 8, pp. 734-736, Aug. 01, 2022). The article also discusses how dental professionals can improve identifying and preventing mental health disorders. The authors feel that mental health disorders can have … Read more

Using Imaging to Help Treat a Fused Wisdom Tooth

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An interesting article titled “Endodontic Management of a Fused Mandibular Third Molar with Supernumerary Tooth Using Cone-Beam Computed Tomography: A Case Report” appears in the American Journal of Case Reports written by W. Almutairi and M. Alduraibi (2022; 23: e937224). The article discusses a case report of a 26 year old man that had a wisdom tooth fused with with a supernumerary tooth. In the article discussion is made of the 26 year old man man with good oral hygiene who arrived at the author’s college in Saudia Arabia after having two days of severe pain on his lower jaw. An exam showed a large, mesially tilted, irregular wisdom tooth fused with a fourth molar. The fused tooth was tender to touch and responded to pain when a cold stimulus was used. The clinical findings suggested symptomatic irreversible pulpitis with … Read more

Over half of patients say dentists fail to screen for health risks

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An interesting article titled “Patients’ comfort with and receipt of health risk assessments during routine dental visits: Results from the South Atlantic region of the US National Dental Practice-Based Research Network” written by Y. Guo and et. al. appears in the Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiololgy (vol. 00, pp. 1–10, 2022). In the article the authors seek to better determine the comfort level patients have with with health risk assessments (HRAs) and ascertain factors associated with the provision of HRAs. In the article, the authors conducted a cross-sectional study of 30 actively licensed dentists that were recruited out of 469 dentists in the South Atlantic Region of the US National Dental PBRN and recruited 30 patients each seen between January and March 2018. Each patient was asked to complete a questionnaire before and after their dental visit. The pre-questionnaire consisted … Read more

Characteristics of malpractice for TMJ Surgery

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An interesting article titled “Characteristics of Medical Malpractice Claims Involving Temporomandibular Joint Surgery in the United States” appears in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery written by M. Green and et. al. (April 14, 2022, vol. 80, no. 7, pp. 1153-1157). The article seeks to explore the characteristics of medical malpractice claims that involve temporomandibular joint (TMJ) surgery by oral and maxillofacial surgeons in the U.S. In the article the authors conducted a study using data provided from OMS National Insurance Company, RRG (OMSNIC), which represents approximately 5,000 oral and maxillofacial surgeons in the United States. Closed malpratice claims data over the time period from from 1, 2016, through December 31, 2020 that was for claims against oral and maxillofacial surgeons in the Unites States with insurance coverage from OMSNIC was studied. Such claims were limited to lawsuits and … Read more

Pediatric Dentists Can Benefit from Improving their Image Interpretation Skills

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An interesting study titled “Does clinical experience with dental traumatology impact 2D and 3D radiodiagnostic performance in paediatric dentists? An exploratory study” appears in the BMC Oral Health written by Gertrude Van Gorp and et al. (vol. 22, no. 245, 2022). The article seeks to explore the performance of pediatric dentists when identifying and detecting traumatic dental injuries on both 2D and 3D images. In the study the authors analyzed data from nine pediatric dentists (six female and three male) who had used structured scoring sheets to randomly assess 2D and 3D images of anterior permanent teeth with dental trauma. The researchers analyzed the level of experience with traumatic dental injuries on imaging, identification, and interpretation of lesions. The authors compared these results to benchmark data from expert consensus of an experienced dentomaxillofacial radiologist and pediatric endodontist. Six of of … Read more