pediatric dentistry

Grant Awarded to Help Improve How Primary Care Doctors Apply Fluoride Varnish on Kids Teeth

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A grant in the amount of $424,000 was awarded for researchers at Kennesaw State University in Georgia to study how flouride varnish is applied to kids teeth. The grant was awarded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health in particular to explore how pediatricians apply fluoride varnish to kids teeth. The grant is for a three year period of time. It is the first NIH grant awarded soley to Kennesaw State. Fluoride varnishis applied to help reduce decay for both primary teeth and permanent teeth and thus can help improve oral health. In the U.S. insurance pays for pediatricians to apply fluoride varnish to young children. Even so it has been reported that only 4% of pediatricians report regularly applying fluoride varnish to the primary teeth of infants and children. Due to affordability issues many children particulary under three years … Read more

Dental Practitioners – Some Distinctions Between Pediatric Dentists and Other Types of Dentistry

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All dental practitioners deal with oral health issues. While this is true, the practice is further divided into many fields that one can specialize in. As such, they perform different duties depending on the specialization. This creates various types of practitioners such as cosmetic, pediatric, and general dentists. The latter provides generalized oral healthcare services and is at the very basic level of dentistry. They can also do referrals where special care is needed. This article serves to highlight the differences between pediatric and other types of dentistry. For more details, you can for example visit a pediatric dentist in Roanoke and get your questions answered. What is the level of training? In general, all practitioners must acquire a bachelor’s degree from certified institutions and then proceed to attend and graduate from a legitimate dental school. This equips practitioners with … Read more

AAOMS Pushes Back on Anesthesia Guidelines for Pediatric Patients

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Earlier this year in 2019, the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA), the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia (SPA), the American Society of Dentist Anesthesiologists (ASDA), the Society for Pediatric Sedation (SPS), the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD), and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) put out updated guidelines regarding the use of deep sedation and general anesthesia for children at a dental facility. The ASA, SPA, ASDA, and SPS put out a separate distinct set of guidelines from the AAPD/AAP. These guidelines are available from https://www.asahq.org/advocacy-and-asapac/advocacy-topics/office-based-anesthesia-and-dental-anesthesia/joint-statement-pediatric-dental-sedation and the June 2019 edition of Pediatrics in an article titled “Guidelines for Monitoring and Management of Pediatric Patients Before, During, and After Sedation for Diagnostic and Therapeutic Procedures” written by Coté and Wilson, which was previously discussed in the blog post Updated Sedation Guidelines in Dentistry for Children. The guidelines are slightly different but the … Read more

Is Pediatric Dental Death Avoidable?

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An interesting article titled “Pediatric Dental Anesthesia: An Avoidable Tragedy,” written by Lee et al. appears in the December 2017 edition of Pediatrics (vol. 140, no. 6). In the article the authors present a case of a dental death after anesthesia for early childhood caries and have experts provide commentary. Pediatric dental deaths have been reported in the news over the years with all too much frequency. See the dental deaths page for numerous cases and the original source of the information regarding the case. In the article by Lee the authors say how young children with early childhood caries or cavities are often treated using moderate sedation or general anesthesia. It is estimated that up to 250,000 pediatric sedations for dental treatment occur in the U.S. each year. In these sedations the children are often given benzodiazepines, opioids, nitrous … Read more

What to Ask the Dentist Before Children Have Sedation

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In July of 2017, Today ran a nice piece titled “9 questions to ask your dentist before your kids go under sedation,” written by Linda Caroll, July 10, 2017. The article discusses some recent children dental deaths that occurred in the last few years. If you have been on teethremoval.com before, you know that many cases like these have been covered in the past and you can see more on http://www.teethremoval.com/death.html and http://www.teethremoval.com/dental_deaths.html. The article says that doctors from the American Academy of Pediatrics are speaking out about the dangers of sedating children for oral surgery. It is said that it is unclear how many children or adults for that matter, have died in the U.S. during dental procedures. However, some work by the Dallas Morning News in 2015, indicates a dental patient dies nearly every other day in the U.S. The state … Read more