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Archives for January 2011

Dental trauma is not funny

January 28, 2011 By Eva Watson Leave a Comment

by Eva Watson

Dental Trauma is Not Funny… I lied.  It’s kind of funny.

In an effort to provide the Dental Buzz audience with a little blurb of cheeky dental absurdity, I offer a tale- a tale of an ominous olive pit, its perilous journey into the oral cavity of Ohio Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, and the tooth that became a legend. The story begins in the year 2008.

Ahem…

Olive pit: OW! SON OF A #%@!  The jerk just bit me! What the hell, man?!

Rep. Kucinich: I just bit down on an olive pit… oh, poop.

Tooth: Huh… that felt kinda good.

Olive pit: Are you whack, tooth?!  What’s wrong with you?

Tooth: Well, I’ve been decaying away in this gentleman’s mouth for some time anyway. Gets boring. That was a lot of excitement for me.

Rep. Kucinich: Wow. My tooth really hurts.

Olive pit: That totally sucked! He hurt me! Which means YOU HURT ME!

Tooth: Oh, come on, olive pit. Don’t be such a wet ham. Didn’t that turn you on a little?

Olive pit: That’s not funny. Are you a sadist or something?

Tooth: You’re such a baby.

Rep. Kucinich: Umm- my tooth really hurts.

Olive pit: I’m not a baby. I’m injured!

Tooth: Live a little. You may like it.

Olive pit: The dude bit me, and now I’m forced to live in his colon. Lovely!

Tooth: Maybe I’ll get a root canal. That would be so hot.

Rep. Kucinich: Doesn’t anyone care about me?

Olive pit: Pipe down, Kucinich!

Tooth: Please get a root canal. Please-please-please?

Three years later…

Rep. Kucinich:  My tooth still hurts.  It’s 2011 and my tooth still hurts.  I think I’ll sue the cafeteria that sold me that suspicious lunch wrap. That’ll learn ‘em.

Tooth: Hope I get another root canal… hee-hee.

•••••••••••••••

Dennis Kucinich has apologized for all of the distraction that he’s caused, and has announced within an hour of this writing that he had settled the lawsuit.

For the record, here’s a copy of the lawsuit (PDF) that Kucinich brought against the olive pit (and the company that left it in his sandwich).

Filed Under: Fun, Humor Tagged With: Dennis Kucinich, dental injuries, dental lawsuit, Fun, humor

Patients can keep on smoking?

January 24, 2011 By Trish Walraven 6 Comments

by Trish Walraven

Stanky Moufs, Stanky Moufs, I want to rid the world of Stanky Moufs. When a patient sits down in a chair with a freshly-stanked cigarette mouf, that smell hangs in the operatory longer than their jacket.

Is the American Lung Association with me? NO! Maybe it’s because they’re still getting a part of that $206 billion settlement from Big Tobacco back in 1998. Can’t put their sugar daddy out of bidness.

Well then, is the government with me? Not really. The government wants to tax those stanky moufs for recreational nicotine use, and they want to regulate the patches, gums, and lozenges being sold as medical devices designed for smoking cessation.

How many smoking patients do you have that don’t want to quit? They’re not supposed to admit to you that they really love smoking, now. Especially not to you. But more and more of them are coming into my practice, breaths a-bloomin’, tissues pinkin’, and when I ask them if they quit smoking, they don’t say yes. They say that they’ve switched to e-cigarettes.

RRRrrrRRT ( that record scratch stop noise that’s used too much in media but I can’t help myself). WHAT THE?  WHAT IS AN E-CIGARETTE?

I Gurgled it. Gurgling is kind of like Googling except that you ask your patient an open-ended question while they’ve got a little spit in the back of their throat that they really don’t have but they think they do and they want you to suck it out before they answer the question.

Best answer I got: “Well, everyone in our office either got a supply of E-Cigarettes if they would quit using regular cigarettes, or $200 to use on themselves if they weren’t smokers.” An employer has gone out of their way to get tobacco out of the bodies of their workforce. This sounded BIG.

That’s when the internet got much more handy than Gurgling. Here’s a great description of an E-Cigarette from AlterNet:

The e-cigarette was invented in China in 2004. It’s a cigarette-shaped tube that contains a rechargeable battery, a mini-vaporizer, a small reservoir, sensors and, in most cases, a light on the tip. The sensor notes when you take a drag on the tube and turns on the vaporizer, which more-or-less instantaneously turns the substances in the reservoir into a stream of visible water vapor that mimics the taste and feel of tobacco smoke. The tip glows like the end of a lit cigarette with each drag. It’s infused with the taste of tobacco – or tobacco combined with other flavors for those who are into that sort of thing – and nicotine, in various doses (including none at all). The refill cartridges – which look like the butt of the cigarette–give you about the same number of drags as a pack of cigarettes, but cost around $3 each – a bit more than half the national average and a third of what a pack of smokes go for in places like New York City.

The next question everyone asks is “Is it safer?” (I must stop with the Marathon Man references…this is only my second offense, sorry!). But really. Are e-cigs safer than tobacco? I for one am totally convinced that they will kill you much, much slower than tobacco, and far slower than water (if you’re drowning in it, of course). It’s the combustion that creates the majority of carcinogens found in cigarettes, which is why no real smoke is safe. The vapor ingredients in an e-cigarette – propylene glycol or glycerin – are Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) by the Food and Drug Administration. The problem arises when you don’t know what else is being added to the cartridges. Like Cialis. No joke. You can get some Cialis to smoke in an e-cigarette here. What about a dangerous, banned weight loss drug? They’ve got that too.

These extreme additives are all the excuse that e-cigarette opponents need to try to get them banned in the United States. That’s why no one will touch this issue, especially with the FDA coming down hard on new tobacco products in March. The federal courts are leaving it alone for now, but arising is a vast current of e-cigarette fanboys. They call themselves Vapers, and their recreation? Vaping.

What do you prefer? Stank Mouf or vape mouth? If your patients are committed to their cigarettes, it might not be such a bad idea to turn them on to something that may do less harm than their current habit.

I don’t know about you, but my ops are smelling better already. 

UPDATED 2/21/19: The CDC has an infographic with a few surprising current statistics about e-cig usage. You can view it here:

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/pdfs/Electronic-Cigarettes-Infographic-p.pdf

Filed Under: Featured, Preventive Care, Products, Research, Technology Tagged With: dental, e-cigarettes, e-cigs, marathon man, preventive care, smoking cessation, vaping

A few things you need to know

January 21, 2011 By Eva Watson Leave a Comment

by Eva Watson

I act dumb. Full stop. I’m a grown woman who acts like an immature twit. I’m constantly making fun of everything. When I noticed crunchy, dried-up boogers sticking to the wall next to my three-year-old’s bed, I said, “Syd? Santa thinks that’s disgusting. Now you’re on his disgusting list. Great.” So cruel. I can’t even write maturely. I once wrote an article on

recommendations for thwarting raccoon thievery of my summer garden strawberries; the segment was titled, ‘Raccoon Smasher Garden Patrol’… (snort) See? Tasteless. I can’t help myself. Life gets stupid. But it doesn’t stop there. My adolescent humor even seeps into my care of patients.

A young guy was in my operatory chair. He hadn’t had a professional scaling in four years. I was about to begin his SRP when he said, “I might be a big baby when you get in there.” I laughed and said, “That’s what I tell my OB/Gyn.” Later, when the guy asked to see another hygienist, I said to myself, “I’m so retarded.”

Another patient attempted to describe what sounded like floss threaders. She went on for more than five minutes trying to describe what floss threaders looked like. I finally said, “You mean those furry, tampon-y thingies with the long string attached? Yeah, I have those.” After the patient rolled her eyes and asked to speak with the dentist privately, I thought to myself, “I’m so juvenile. Why do I do that?”

With the influx of dental products out there, I wish there was a device to zap me with low-voltage electrical currents when I misbehave; like a TENS unit but angrier. As soon as I unleash a nasty one—zzzzt! Owie. Everything would be fine after that, but I’d have to explain to patients why my hair has a static electricity boner. I suppose it doesn’t have to be a dental product, per se. It could be manufactured by a urologist for what it’s worth. They could call it The Electrical Nerve Punisher.

I don’t know. Perhaps it’s not a good idea after all.

 



Filed Under: Anecdotes, Humor Tagged With: anecdotes, Fun, humor

A big bowl of warm soup for Allcare Dental

January 15, 2011 By Eva Watson 1 Comment

It’s cold out there, isn’t it? Well, here. Seek refuge from the frigid entrails of winter and sit your bottom down. Try to relax. There. Doesn’t that feel better? Of course, it does. I made a big pot of my split-pea soup. It is good, isn’t it? I’m glad you like it. Now… WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO THE MONEY?!

Did it just float away somewhere into the abyss of dental folly? Was it poorly managed by a pack of flying wombats? Or, worse yet, was it engulfed by a colossal kettle of tiny nuns as they were shouting, “Sweet nectar of the gods! Give us more!”

Patients trusted you. Now they have to find another dentist, pay more money for uncompleted treatment, and take unpaid days off from their jobs to finish major dental work. Some of these patients may have to take out additional loans just to see a new dentist.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Money, Practice Management Tagged With: Allcare Dental, humor, money, practice management

New year at DentalBuzz

January 1, 2011 By Trish Walraven Leave a Comment

By Trish Walraven

2011 is the year for inspirations to move us towards actions, so it only seemed right today to share a few things with the DentalBuzz audience.

My subscriptions to various RSS feeds is getting rather long, especially the dental blogs, and it’s just not fair for me to keep them all to myself! You’ll notice that there’s a new Bloglist to help you get all of the news and insights that concern you as a dental professional. Some other resources that I use are DentalTown and Dr. Bicuspid, but if you also enjoy following individual voices then you simply must browse through all of the great blogs that I’ve evaluated here at DentalBuzz. Also, please me know if there are some that you read that I haven’t listed.

You may have already noticed the other change. It’s the voice here. The impersonal nature of third person sometimes causes me to feel disengaged from the audience, and as much as humor is less risky from that perspective (especially when bravery is involved because it can be DIFFICULT to pull off!) it also makes it harder to stay inspired. So hi, audience. One of my favorite kinds of humor is that which is Andy Kaufman-esque so it’s okay if you laugh uncomfortably at my poor comedic attempts.

In the meantime, this controversial article was recently written about a product that I was hoping to bring to the table at our next office meeting. The product in question is Perio Protect®, an anti-biofilm regimen that shows great promise for non-surgical perio resolution. Is it a scam? Can a periodontist’s opinion be trusted, especially when the argument is against a product that is being touted to specifically keep patients out of a periodontist’s practice? In this case, power to the blogger perio dude. Even though it is in his best financial interest to scorn a system that relies on patient compliance at home to be effective, he gets huge points for diligent research. Ultimately, it comes down to me and the irritation that he has caused me personally. Because I’ll now have to find some other implementable product or service to present in our practice for the new year.

Also Dr. Todd, thanks for the inspiration.

Filed Under: Humor, Products, Research Tagged With: Blogroll, Perio Protect

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DentalBuzz explores rising trends in dentistry with its own slant. The speed at which new products and ideas enter the dental field can often outpace our ability to understand just exactly the direction in which we are heading. But somehow, by being a little less serious about dentistry and dental care, we might get closer to making sense of it all.

So yeah, a tongue-in-cheek pun would fit really nicely here, but that would be in bad taste. Never mind, it just happened anyways. Stop reading sidebars already and click on some content instead.

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