trends, innovations, and quirks of dentistry
As a hygienist, I don’t prep teeth. I pop caps all the time, though, when the cement is dangling out of a margin and I’m working it hard with a cavitron tip. Wooo, those are smelly enough to inspire me to write some lyrics using this song as a framework.
In the meantime, enjoy this dental school video.
Hal Mayforth must really like dental floss. Therefore I like Hal Mayforth, and as much as I used to be an evangelical hygienist who preached that there was only ONE WAY to dental health, and that was through flossing, I have since become a little more ecumenical in my approach: there are many paths to righteousness. WaterPiks, Stimudents, Superfloss, Sonicares, Soft-Picks, angled flossing gizmos, they’re all okay in my book of holiness as long as patients aren’t looking all stagnant between their teeth when they visit our office.
In your office, you should still promote flossing as well, since it’s the gold standard of interdental cleaning, patients understand its necessity, and they’re expecting the lecture from you, but they still won’t do it, maybe.
Or maybe if you let something else do the talking, they might floss? That’s where Hal Mayforth comes in. He’s an illustrator whose style may already feel familiar to you. It should; he’s been doing this sort of thing for over 35 years. His keen humor might look really good in your operatories, in your reception area, along the walls, and it just so happens that he’s got a few prints for sale about dental health if you’re looking for a way to lift up the level of levity in your practice.
When he’s not tending to his teeth, Hal Mayforth is busy getting his work published in national magazines like Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Forbes and many others. You know, the ones who still actually print on paper. And his sketchbook is fun, too. I borrowed a couple of sketches from it to display below for you to enjoy, and mostly, for you to get a sense of his focus.
It would make me happy for you to Visit Hal’s website and take a look at his creativity. If for nothing else, you need a smile today.
And isn’t that what dentistry is really about?
Do you know how sometimes, when you get a new piece of equipment, it’s so Shifta La Paradigma that you can’t even THINK about working without it? You get a little anxious about the possibility of it failing and having to go back to the old way of doing things. What do you do?
You get yourself a backup, right? hoping that your original will keep going until FedEx arrives with your precious cardboard salvation. But then you realize that the backup is so Next Generation, your OLD one ends up becoming the backup. And that’s where I am with my Lumadent headlight. I have the old, the new, and opinions about them both, which are the real reasons you’re here. So let’s get to those, shall we?
Not only is the Lumadent headlight well-focused and a good color, its shadowless light means that more photons are hitting your retinas, therefore the mouth that you’re looking at may be ACTUALLY MORE GROUNDED in reality. If you can’t see something, it’s not there.
Since I haven’t used any other lights except the Lumadent consider this a broad endorsement for headlights over any other sort of overhead illumination. Just about all of them have some sort of knob that will allow you to adjust the intensity, and I find that I rarely turn the Lumadent’s control any more or less than to the halfway position. I’ve learned how to control my head so that the light doesn’t shine in my patient’s eyes (unless I’m gesticulating wildly, then they might see a few blinding streaks) and the super bright just isn’t necessary most of the time. Also included is a flip-up composite filter to keep your accidental light curing to a minimum. I’ve heard some concerns about LEDs damaging user’s eyes over time which is one reason I tend to keep the power down, but don’t seem to have any problems with eyestrain in the two years I’ve been using one. The new model seems to be just as bright and as clear as the older one, so no change in this most important feature.
Opinion #2: Cords are better. And worse.But mostly better. I’ll explain. The cord replacement is much easier now that the light detaches completely from it. They’ve also switched to a longer initial cord which means that I don’t have to keep a too-long extension hanging around or knotted up in a tie wrap. You’ll notice that the plug-in at the battery has changed to a right-angle which should keep the tension off the cord. I was KILLING my extensions contacts and the light would flicker and just short out and be a huge pain.
What I’m less than thrilled with is the way that the right-angle attaches to the light itself. If you end up with a short in the new cord now, all you do is detach it right there, loupside, leave the light on the loupe, and plug in a new cord. But the cord sticks up at a weird angle and I’m forced to use yet another tiny tie-wrap to keep those wires from getting tangled in my hair and attached close to the frames. The other thing I do like is that the lens is easier to access and clean now that it’s not recessed. It’s the one on the left in this image. 
My original battery pack served me well and would stay charged for a whole day, but its slick case in a sassy leather pouch clip probably caused the short outs due to occasional detachment problems. Not the clip, just the battery itself would skittle across the floor when I had a “way to go, Grace” moment. 
Now that I have two batteries I forget to charge the new silver one, but I have yet to have it clunk out on me and switching back to the black one for backup. Once you go silver….
So this pack is so serious, it’s like Chuck Norris, it has it’s OWN clip built in. A very tough clip. One so tough that if you wear those cute scrubs with the flared legs and the knit waistline you can forget trying to spread the clip enough to get it to attach to your pants. But I adapted by figuring out how to wear it on a waist-level pocket. Now my biggest issue is leaning close to patients and inadvertently turning the light off at the black side switch. I really think it was better on the top when it was red and adjacent to the intensity knob.
I’m just going to think I’m better than you if you don’t have one. That’s my throwdown. If you use the excuse that headlights cost too much? Compare the Lumadent with its “better” competitors, it’s so much less expensive, you can buy one for you AND your assistant. And for your higher power loupes, for that matter. What about the problem with wires and bulk? The Lumadent is so lightweight that once you adjust your behavior a little (all I did was to begin wearing a strap on my loupes instead of taking them on and off so that they hang around my neck when I’m not using them) they will become a much easier part of you than having to reach up and adjust a mounted light somewhere over your right shoulder, in space. And patients stop anticipating the bright light and never squint anymore when it’s time to open their mouths. PATIENT ACCEPTANCE IS AMAZING, and in my opinion, the BEST reason why you should get a Lumadent.
This is my parting shot for you, a side view of the Lumadent attached to a pair of Through-The-Lens shielded SandyGrendel loupes with the custom mount that came with the light. See how it sticks up a little too high, and there are two tie-wraps, and a cord management doohickey making this all such a mess?
No? I don’t see it either, actually.
For earlier insights about Lumadent and the company, click here to go to the DentalBuzz original review.
It looks like wisdom teeth can be preventable.
Now that you’ve found yourself a little incensed at the inflammatory title of this blog post (sometimes it takes alarm words to grab people’s eyeballs these days!) you’ll realize that the word ABORT actually does apply in this case.
Last month Tufts University School of Dental Medicine announced that there was a correlation between the injection of local anesthesia given to children between the ages of two and six and evidence of missing lower wisdom teeth. In other words, if a child had an IAN block at this age, they were over 4 times more likely to have missing third molar buds when radiographs were taken at least three years later.
At this young age, the cells that will become the third molar are not much larger than the anesthetic needle itself, and the developing tooth bud is quite vulnerable to injury. Dr. Anthony Silvestri, a clinical professor at Tufts University and an author of this study, has also published research to support the trauma theory of wisdom tooth prevention, showing that both diode lasers and electrosurgical energy can stop third molars from developing in rats.
Interestingly enough, I might have been affected by this phenomenon. As a kid I had my share of mandibular blocks as soon as my permanent molars started popping in with occlusal decay, and never developed my lower wisdom teeth. Thank you, Dr. Big-Scary-Hands-But-Really-Nice-Dentist Tom Watson DDS! Thank you for excusing my future visit to the oral surgeon.
You know, if the science behind this prophylactic de-nucleation of third molars gains any momentum, think about the consequences. In the next thirty years out-of-work oral surgeons will be lining up in protest of the loss of their bread and butter business. They’ll be picketing general dentists who perform these euphemisms and call them names like wizzie abortionists or bud killers.
Don’t take a side just yet. At this point the ethics of new research itself are even in question, but if there is a way to inoculate kids against the inconvenience of such minor diseases as chicken pox and shingles, why shouldn’t we at least explore the idea of making third molar extraction an option instead of an inevitability for most people?
And as a hygienist trying to hit production goals, I say, well, there goes my fourth qualifying tooth for quadrant scaling and root planing.
Thanks to these articles for all their information:
TuftsNow: Dental Anesthesia May Interrupt Development of Wisdom Teeth in Children
Nerve Blocks in Children May Destroy Future Molars
Dimensions of Dental Hygiene: Local Anesthesia and Wisdom Teeth Development
You know how they say whatever you give to the universe, it will come back to you double? I shoulda been more careful….
This all started about a month ago, and it wasn’t even supposed to be a poem; more like silly prose set to music, but one thing led to another and the darn thing practically wrote itself. Not that it’s art in the sense of revealing the true nature of the human condition, but I thought it was pretty funny and so I shared my little ditty, “The Ballet of the Stray Hair” with a friend, who posted it over here at DentalEggs. You should go there, read it, and then continue on with this story.
Back already? Well, then.
A few weeks later, unsolicited, a little limerick popped up in my inbox from a professor at the college where I took my STATE BOARD EXAM! What do I do? I HAVE to publish it, right? Because if I don’t I’ll keep having those nightmares where my instructors find about a bajillion clicks of subgingival calculus and make me repeat my senior year over and over until finally I get to take my board exam and lo and behold the patient’s teeth are caked with green marijuana stain…. Wait, no, actually, that last part really did happen.
In the middle of all this, I was invited to the Townie Meeting, and something that didn’t happen in Vegas didn’t stay in Vegas. It came home as a bug in the back of my brain (it could have been in a worse place, admit it, you thought it!). One of DentalTown’s original masters of meter told me that there were thousands! yes thousands of dental haiku written years ago, almost forgotten behind the cobwebbed threads of the message boards. And I received permission to repost a few of them here.
Hey Universe… thank you?
On to the poetry now.
(be sure to click the link to see why this limerick’s subject is appropriate)
There practiced a dentist in Maine,
Who worked hard, hard as a train,
Esthetics was his love,
But he forgot to glove,
The Boards took his license again.
These haiku are posted in the order of their original appearance. Think movie credits, but with only one actor. It’s kind of a soliloquy, actually.
OSHA training tape
must review for staff to watch
thrice I fall asleep
patient excited
will fix rotten teeth tuesday
oops forgot check book
open wide I say
the assistant turns to retch
oh god it’s anug
brown nubs, baked bean teeth
patient rinses with pepsi
between cigarettes
Lortab seven please
Ultracet is what you’ll get
no? then there’s the door
a long day for me
tears, red-faced child wants father
refer to pedo
“just so you know Doc,
I don’t like things in my mouth!”
Not even your brush?
your teeth are rotting
hurting, stinking, and all loose
“Can I get them bleached?”
two rough sedations
why did he eat that breakfast?
vomit in the sink
other doc’s patient
MFLI composite
should I steal him? No.
I hate most endo
boring snoring tedious
oh crap! broke a file.
started root canal
paid in full but won’t come back
on mom’s credit card
can you get it out?
well, there’s nothing left but root…
do I need a shot?
why do I do them?
the tooth is buried in bone
sadomasochist
zoom day white excel
left it in my trays too long
teeth are white, but ouch!
silver point canal
retreatment necessary
ultrasonic? yes.
perio abcess
white purulent exudate
debride and Trimox
smoke? get dry socket
I pack some gelfoam in there
maybe it helps some
appointments not kept
what is wrong with these people?
next time I’ll not show
what’s that dark shadow?
it’s peri-implantitis
periodontist
DENTURE PATIENT
This plate doesn’t fit!
he looks at the wall photo
I want ’em like that!
Immediate teeth
he wanted them yesterday
expects perfection
I don’t understand!
why is this taking so long?
this stuff makes me gag!
my old teeth were fine!
except that they were rotten…
“You should have brushed them”
EXTRACTIONS
cold steel and sunshine
former captive relinquished
clink clank shiny bowl
cotton gauze poultice
damming the flow of red life
platelets, activate
By no means is this collection complete! These were my favorite dental-themed haiku, and even though I didn’t check them carefully they all seem to follow the traditional 5-7-5 syllable rule. If you adored these like I do and want more from those who haven’t given me permission to share, go on over to this DentalTown thread, become a member if you haven’t already, enjoy the sometimes poignant ramblings of a bygone time, maybe even hold a revival and start a new poetry post if you’re inspired thusly.
And I promise, no more poems about hair from me!
Darn! She made it private! what? The poem that I wrote. So I guess that means I’ll have to host it my own dang self here.
Watch my fingertips: nimbly they fly
along the lip line, touching on cusps
to steady their course
while their grasp guides a mirror and a probe.
Their orchestration is captured in full spectrum detail
Thanks to a pair of magnification loupes
And a headlight emanating from my third eye area.
Previously unnoticed, a black line of evil
begins to uncoil away from the mirror handle
and adheres itself to the tacky vermillion border.
The spectre of horror becomes threefold alarming
When I realize that the patient is a blonde.
At this point I’m not wondering of its origins
as much as trying to get rid of the hair
before the patient becomes aware.
My ring finger attacks
in its pale latex slicker.
Success! I have liftoff
And a wipe to the napkin
Surely means that the hair is gone.
Worky-work, cleanie-clean.
WTF? It’s back! This time on the tongue!
Damn that static cling.
The hair is mocking me.
Time to go all Wile E. Coyote on its ass.
Quick glance to the patient’s eyes.
Total obliviousness. Good.
The snare is laid
between my suction tip and modified pen grasp.
Crap. The hair went halfway IN the saliva ejector
and now it’s acting like a telephone cord
that doesn’t want to wind straight.
OMG. Hair s t r e t c h e s before it breaks.
Two big black hairs in my patient’s mouth.
Two big. Black. Alien hairs.
It’s time for a gauzy intervention.
“I got a little messy, here, let me clean you up!”
With the force of a primary tooth extraction
times two
the hairs are gone.
They are gone for sure
because I took the two pieces of gauze
over to the wastebasket
and personally dumped them
and checked my static latex fingers afterwards.
We both sigh.
Worky-work, cleanie-clean.
Really? A booger?
Hanging halfway out of the patient’s nose?
I sure hope that’s not someone else’s, too.