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How’s your hearing?

October 9, 2008 By Trish Walraven 3 Comments

Nice product presentation on the left, don’t you think?

Now what exactly are they? The latest in clear maxillary molar implants?

Wrong. You stick them in your ears. You. The dental professional.  Yes, you, the person who is losing their hearing and doesn’t mind spending about a grand to protect what’s left of your stereocilia.

Not losing your hearing? Then prove it to yourself. Take the test below in a quiet place. Naturally you need to have speakers turned up to about medium to hear all the frequencies. The higher ranges are what are known as the “mosquito” ringtones, which are outside the audible range of people over 30, and often used by the young-uns to send stealth text messages to each other.

There have been a few inconclusive studies published in the dental journals this decade about the concern that high decibel-level noise is an occupational hazard in dental practices. We thought that now would be a good time to gather a little of our own anecdotal evidence, and see how dentists’ hearing stacks up to the general population.

Play     Frequency          Age Range
 8 kHz Everyone
10 kHz 60 & Younger
12 kHz 50 & Younger
14 kHz 45 & Younger
15 kHz 39 & Younger
16 kHz 30 & Younger
17 kHz 24 & Younger
18 kHz 22 & Younger
19 kHz 20 & Younger
20 kHz 18 & Younger
21 kHz 17 & Younger
22 kHz 16 & Younger

Be sure to use your browser’s “back” button to come back to this page each time until you’ve figured out which frequency is your upper limit.

The University of New South Wales in Australia has posted this test if you’d like a more comprehensive hearing exam. And if it looks like your future may be one of geriatric deafness, you might want to give thought to the benefits of a pair of DentalEars.

Filed Under: Operative Dentistry, Products, Research, Technology Tagged With: Dental Ear, dental hearing loss, Hearing aids, hearing test, mosquito ringtones, survey

STA, OraVerse, or GumEase (oh my)

July 7, 2008 By Trish Walraven 5 Comments

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.

 

Filed Under: Operative Dentistry, Products Tagged With: Anesthesia, Dental Wand, GumEase, Ligmaject, OraVerse, STA system, TENS, VibraJect

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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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