dental treatment

Barriers in Teledentistry Exist

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An interesting article titled “Teledentistry Adoption and Use During the COVID-19 Pandemic” written by M, Fernando T, Surdu S, and Romero A. appears in the Oral Health Workforce Research Center, Center for Health Workforce Studies (July 2023). The article sough to explore how the adoption of teledentistry has changed in recent years and what barriers still exist with its use. Teledentistry has been discussed before on this site such as at the post Delivering Dentistry and Counseling to Patients using Telemedicine. Teledentistry is defined as using electronic information including interactive audio, video, and data communications to provide and support dental care whereby the care occurs virtually from where the oral health professional is licensed. Teledentistry provides an efficient way for dental professionals to consult, diagnose, follow up, and offer health education to patients and helps to reduce the number of in-person visits.  The … Read more

How Often Do Problems Occur with Dental Sedation in Children

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An interesting article titled “Assessing the safety of deep sedation in outpatient pediatric oral health care,” written by Henal Alpesh Gandhi and et. al. appears in the Journal of the American Dental Association (2023). The article assesses the safety of deep sedation supported care with pediatric dental treatment carried out in an outpatient setting. It is estimated that in the US, 100,000 through 250,000 cases of pediatric dental procedures with sedation occur each year. Most of the cases of among kids 3 to 5 years old. Children are predisposed to deep sedation and d general anesthesia related respiratory problems because of age-related variations in anatomy and physiology. Some of the reasons children need deep sedation for dental health care include extent of dental disease and amount of treatment needed,limited ability of the child to cooperate, and intent to protect the … Read more

Lidocaine shot during dental treatment may have led to heart attack

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An interesting article titled “Acute Myocardial Infarction After a Local Anesthetic Procedure in a Middle-Aged Patient” written by Lei Xiao and et al. appears in the American Journal of Medical sciences (2022). The article discusses how an injection of lidocaine into a 50 year old man during dental treatment possibly induced coronary artery spasm and led to acute myocardial infarction (AMI). In the article the authors discuss how a 50-year old man was admitted to a hospital complaining of chest distress, chest pain, and shortness of breath for the past four hours in March 2020. What had happened four hours earlier, was that the man with no history of high blood pressure, diabetes, atrial fibrillation, or high cholesterol visited a dentist and had a dental work performed. The man was not a smoker and had no known drug or food … Read more

Pediatric Dental Patients Regularly have Adverse Events

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An interesting article titled “Children Experience Notable Number of Adverse Events During Dental Care” was presented on July 23, 2021, at the virtual session of the 2021  International Association for Dental Research (IADR)/AADR/CADR General Session written by William Nicola and et al. The research set to investigate how common adverse events are for children who receive dental care in the United States. An adverse event is an unfavorable and generally unforeseen incident caused by an error or omission during treatment that has negative consequences for health. Children are believed to suffer more commonly from adverse events than adults because they do not alwasy cooperate and they often can not sit still. The authors had sent out an online anonymous survey to 6,327 active members of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) in late 2019. The survey consisted of 13 … Read more

Can Neck Hyperextension During Dental Treatment Lead to Stroke Like Symptoms?

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An interesting article titled “Major Neurological Deficit Following Neck Hyperextension During Dental Treatment: Report of 2 Cases and Review of the Literature,” written by Victor G. El-Hajj and et. al. appears in the 2022 edition of the The Neurologist. The authors discuss two cases where patients had dental treatment performed and then suffered from neurological impairment due to hyperextension of the neck. Both patients had routine dental treatment done and had their necks overstretched which lead to a hopsital stay. The first patient discussed was a 67 year old man who saw his dentist for bridgework. He had been taking a medication for high blood pressure for nine years but had no history of cerebrovascular events. The man’s dental work took around 45 minutes and he was given local anestheisia. His neck had to be extended during the procedure to … Read more