oral surgeon

Seventeen Year Old Minnesota Teen Dies After Wisdom Teeth Extraction

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A few weeks ago in June, 2015, a 17 year old Minnesota woman died about a week after having wisdom teeth surgery. Near the end of the wisdom teeth surgery her blood pressure increased, her pulse dropped, and she went into cardiac arrest. She then was transferred to a hospital and suffered from seizures and swelling in her brain until passing about a week later. It is not clear what caused the death to occur. She could have possibly had an undisclosed heart condition that has occurred in other cases. It is possible for a patient to only become aware of an asymptomatic and abnormal heart rhythm once they come in for a surgery. I have discussed other deaths from wisdom teeth removal on this website (see http://www.teethremoval.com/death.html). Based on numerous studies and publications I have said that around 1 … Read more

Improving Value: Prespectives from Oral Surgeons

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An interesting editorial appears in the 2014, issue of the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery titled “The Value of Improving Value,” by James Hupp (pp. 843-845, issue 72). In this Dr. Hupp presents a formula for patient value Value = A(Q + PS)/C A = appropriateness, Q = quality, PS = patient satisfaction, and C = costs The author states “First, one can improve outcomes while keeping costs the same. Second, one can decrease costs while keeping outcomes the same. Or third, both outcomes and costs increase, but outcomes per unit of cost improve.” In the article the author discusses how in the past, value in health care was really just about cost cutting. Clinical outcomes were not really taken into account. Now that health care outcomes are being considered, physicians need to find ways to measure value using the … Read more

What to Do about Patients Who Call After Hours Wanting Prescription Drugs

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An interesting article titled “Addressing after-hours requests for prescription drugs,” appears in the April, 2014, issue of  JADA written by G. J Muller II (vol. 145, no. 4, pp. 389-390). The article discusses how the oral and maxillofacial surgeon has had several instances of after hours or weekend phone calls from people claiming to be current or past patients who have had a sudden onset of a toothache and want narcotic pain medication. The surgeon says that the people always agree to be seen in his office the next day or following Monday if it is a weekend. However, often the person will not follow up with the surgeon and not show up for the appointment after having received the medication. The surgeon says occasionally he checks if the person is a patient of record and sometimes the person is not, … Read more

Video Dental Marketing Tips

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Over at thewealthydentist.com in July 27, 2014, Jim Du Molin, gave five video marketing tips for optimizing your dental videos for YouTube, see http://www.thewealthydentist.com/blog/4565/dental-video-marketing-how-to-optimize-your-youtube-dental-videos/. For dentists who are interested in utilizing videos and particularly uploading them to YouTube, the 5 tips are worth following. Jim says that you should plan your video title and utilize it with your dental practice name and geo-targeted keywords. Jim further recommends writing out in words on the screen what you are saying in the video. This can help to allow search engines to direct users to your video. Jim further advocates for thinking carefully about the tags you connect your video with as these connect your video with other videos on YouTube with like tags. The fourth tip is to utilize the description area and include contact information such as the phone number of your … Read more

Considerations For the Cost of Wisdom Teeth

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In a recent post, I discussed the cost of wisdom teeth management based on an article that appeared earlier this year in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (see https://blog.teethremoval.com/the-costs-of-third-molar-wisdom-teeth-management/) Another article discussing wisdom teeth costs also appeared in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery in 2012 (see https://blog.teethremoval.com/the-costs-associated-with-third-molars-wisdom-teeth/). In both articles the authors conclude the costs of non-operative management of asymptomatic, disease-free, wisdom teeth exceeds the cost of operative management. I take issue with their conclusions as I believe they make too many simplifications in their analysis. I argue that the authors are ignoring the real risks of having wisdom teeth extracted that are not going to likely occur with non-operative management. Removing wisdom teeth has complications that can result. Some of these can be serious, permanent, and lasting, and cause considerable cost to both the patient … Read more