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Archives for July 2008

Chairside iPhone modding

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Seriously tweaked patients are bringing their iPhone accessories to dentists nationwide.

 

The newest iPhone almost fits in the original iPhone dock. Almost, but… no.  And MobileMe still doesn’t sync iTunes remotely, so users are either stuck with purchasing the 3G dock for $29 or sticking it to Apple by creatively finding ways to carve out the plastic edges of their old ones.

Desperate for something to drill on, dentists affected by the recent economic downturn have begun aiming their burs outside of their patients’ mouths and are now the prime facilitators of this dock modding craze.

The unnamed dentist pictured above performed the service as part of a “teeth fixin” deal. He is now questioning his decision to allow photography during the modification due to the large number of geeks currently hanging out in his reception area.

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I got a potty mouth

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Hi. I’m a very sad American Indian. I am crying because I just learned that my children have Bisphenol-A in their dental sealants. BPA is bad. It means my boys might end up with man-boobs.

This is about dental pollution, people. It may be ignored by mainstream science, but this problem is real enough to sell newspapers, magazines, and make you read online articles.

What I’ve Heard About Dental Pollution

Everywhere I go I hear about how it’s not fair that the citizens of cities have no choice about the fluoride in their drinking water. Sure, it makes teeth stronger, but there’s a conspiracy of pollution! And it’s the people who are so poor that they can’t even afford cups, they have to tilt their heads sideways to drink under the sink faucet, they are the ones who get the most fluoride in their bodies.

Does fluoride save lives like chlorine does? Wait, I didn’t say that, because it’s going to sound like I am in favor of putting poisons in the water.

You dentists also are protecting the right to fix the holes in people’s mouths with evil substances. If you drill a tooth and put in a silver filling, you have to make the filling soft with toxic mercury. Why can’t you just heat up the silver and pour it in the cavity?

The high road dentists are no better, with their lady-man BPA-leaching plastic composites. I’d rather gnaw on a Nalgene bottle and take my chances with it than have an oil-slick wedged between my teeth 24/7.  The recent petroleum price increases are nothing compared to the cost in human lives.

The other thing that’s polluting our mouths is lead. There’s been lead found in ceramic/metal crowns. They say these crowns come from China. We like to blame everything on China.  But the real reason that there’s lead coming from the dental labs is because the cheap dentists have forced lab technicians to scavenge for scrap metal by secretly dumpster-diving for X-ray film packets.

My shaman tells me that all the metal he sees in people’s mouths is creating imbalance in their meridians. This pollution is caused by all the various metals sending out galvanic currents, which turns our mouths into electrolyte-driven batteries. It scares me even today when I see that trick with the guy who sticks the end of a lightbulb in his mouth and it turns on. I know he’s dying from galvanic currents just for a laugh.

One more pollutant that is caused by the well-meaning but unenlightened dentists of the world is when they leave a dead tooth in a living mouth. Would you leave a cadaver just laying around with living people? Well, this is just what is done when a dentist fills the root canal of a tooth and just leaves the dead shell of a tooth in place.

I’m no Navajo with my sand art, but I sketched out this modern flow chart to help us understand where all this pollution is leading:

The pollutants are circled in red. Only one treatment is circled in green because it doesn’t involve dental pollution.

With only two choices in life if we find that we need a dentist – a polluted mouth or the totally toothless gums of a baby – all we can do is pray to our ancestors to give us naturally strong, healthy teeth.

My life has been one of ignorance until now. I have been going to the dentist regularly, and have had various pollutants placed in my mouth. I still have all of my teeth and have no ill symptoms from the poisons. Should I be grateful, or should I be worried? Are teeth worth it, in the end?

Six Degrees Of Dental Pollution

Here are various tests that you can either do in your office or send home with patients to make sure that you aren’t polluting their mouths:

Fluoride: http://www.hach.com

Bisphenol-A: http://www.biosense.com

Mercury: http://www.heavymetalstest.com/_hgkit.php

Lead: http://www.zefon.com/store/leadcheck-swabs.html

Galvanic Currents: http://www.biomeridian.com/devices.htm

Root Canal Therapy: http://www.holisticdentist.com/articles/root-canal-treatment.html

I know that this isn’t Keep America Beautiful or any other grand public service announcement, but it’s important for dentists to understand the consequences of their actions. And sorry about the waterworks; you know how pollution is a touchy subject for me.

Kids cause you to lose teeth, too

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We finally figured out why the German guy was asking Dustin Hoffman “Is it safe?” in the movie Marathon Man. Obviously his wife was planning on having her third child and he was worried about the folk saying from his native country, “Every child costs the mother one tooth.”

Leave it to the Americans to show that these words actually hold a great deal of truth. Across the socioeconomic strata the results of data examination were consistent: women who gave birth to more children tended to lose more teeth during their lives.

So the next time a pregnant patient is worried about the baby “robbing calcium from her teeth,” dentists can acknowledge that there is a real correlation between making babies and an increase in dental disease. And then take steps with the mother-to-be to minimize the oral flora aggression that seems to rise in their mouths.

Hopefully this will mean fewer drills aimed directly through the central incisors.

STA, OraVerse, or GumEase (oh my)

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For a moment, imagine that this is one of the forms your patients fill out at an initial visit:


Anesthesia Options

We understand that each person has unique concerns when it comes to pain management, and would like to give our patients the opportunity to explore all of the anesthetic techniques available in our modern practice. Please read the following paragraphs and make a checkmark next to the one that best describes and addresses your needs:

1.  Please do not get a needle anywhere near me. You can numb my face with a sledgehammer, but you’d better not even let me see the tip of an etchant syringe or I’ll flip. Pain is preferable to an injection in my case. I will be willing to try electroshock treatment or even a couple of frozen teething rings wedged under my lips, but definitely no shots. With your delicate situation, we have a dental TENS unit available. Two electrodes will be placed in opposite areas of your mouth. We will then run a current of electricity that will fry your noodles allow a fair amount of pain management. Your hand signals will help us control the frequency of the current. TENS feels very similar to sticking your finger in a light socket.   Our other non-sharp alternative is called the GumEase, which is a frozen saline-filled ring that numbs the teeth at the roots. If you are not cold sensitive, cryoanesthesia is better than nothing. And it’s warmer than ice cream.

 

2.  I am okay with injections, but I don’t want to feel anything. Ever.I will do best with relaxation, especially if nitrous oxide sedation is part of the trip, and then you can very, very gently and slowly do what you must. When Dorothy got sight of Glenda’s wand, her ride somewhere over the rainbow was…over. Please use the Wand on me, but make sure that I never see it. We’re not supposed to call it that anymore; the official name for this single tooth anesthesia method from Milestone Scientific is the STA System™. Other dentists may momentarily zing you good with the Henke Sass Wolf  Ligmaject  when they are administering intraligamentary anesthesia, but you’ll find that the STA System is careful and precise. Additionally, the passage of time will seem like nothing as you float off into the happy clouds of laughing gas.

 

3.  I like having my cheek shaked and pulled. It takes my mind off of the needle and back to the golden days of dentistry. Oh, to be a kid again. Because of the inherent post-injection trauma associated with slapping a cheek around like a piece of wet ham, our preference instead is to snap on the VibraJect analgesic syringe clip. You’ll enjoy five times the wiggling in only a quarter of the space.

 

4.  The dental visits had better not interfere with my day because I am a very busy person. Needles are fine, a little pain is okay too. Most importantly, my lip should not still feel like it’s on the floor, a la Bill Cosby, for more than an hour after the appointment. I would like something to make the numb feeling go away as fast as possible. If you can wait until October, 2008 for your dental treatment, OraVerse™, a new anesthetic reversal agent, will be available from the Novalar pharmaceutical company. This additional injection has been shown to accelerate the return to normal sensation and function. It only works if your original anesthetic shot contained the vasoconstrictor epinephrine, but it can pull out the anesthetic stops in less than 90 minutes following the administration of OraVerse.

No matter which method you prefer, the best way to administer anesthesia is always with a caring touch.

So for all you dentists who mail out postcards to potential patients, please don’t advertise that you’re gentle if you’re not. With all the options available, painful dentistry is pretty much inexcusable.

 

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