{"id":870,"date":"2018-12-25T15:23:32","date_gmt":"2018-12-25T15:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jpeterstclairdentistry.com\/blog\/?p=870"},"modified":"2018-12-17T15:24:13","modified_gmt":"2018-12-17T15:24:13","slug":"freak-of-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jpeterstclairdentistry.com\/blog\/freak-of-nature\/","title":{"rendered":"FREAK OF NATURE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I recently attended a dental continuing education course entitled \u201cHit Man or Healer?\u201d The course was given by a well-known leader in the dental profession. The basic premise of the course was the notion that we have a lot more science, studies, and data available today to be able to make better decisions about the treatment that we dentists recommend to patients. The concept is called evidence-based dentistry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea is that if a very structured examination\nand diagnosis is done, treatment recommendations can be made based on science.\nThe problem is, many times the diagnosis leads to suggestions that without the\nproper dialogue can make the dentist look like a \u201chit man\u201d (ie. patient\nperception of over-treatment) vs. \u201chealer\u201d (intervention with the intention to\npreserve the teeth better for the long-term).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lecturer started by putting an image\nof a person\u2019s teeth on the screen and asking the audience to guess how old the\nperson was. Although it is relatively easy to estimate a person\u2019s age during\ntransition from the primary teeth to permanent teeth, it is apparently a little\nmore difficult when all the permanent teeth are in. I guessed the age of the\npatient on the screen to be between 50 and 60. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The patient had great looking teeth. You\ncould tell the person was a mature adult by the darkening of the teeth, but\nthere was very little wear and very minimal dentistry. The patient ended up\nbeing 94 years old. The lecturer displayed the woman\u2019s full face on the screen\nand said, \u201cIs this the way teeth should look at 94 or is this woman a freak of\nnature?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there are definitely genetic\nfactors that play a role, many of the problems we see today with teeth are 100%\npreventable. Take decay for example; decay is 100% preventable. However, it is\nstill not uncommon today to have a patient (typically a teenager) come in for a\nroutine dental hygiene appointment and be told they have decay, or multiple\nareas of decay, which were not present 6 months ago. In that scenario the\ndentist would be considered the \u201chit man\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201chealer\u201d may have taken a different\napproach and may have done a more thorough evidence-based evaluation and made\nrecommendations based on diet, homecare habits and maybe even familial history\nthat may have prevented the decay in the first place. Dentists have gotten good\nat telling patients how they can \u201cfix\u201d the problem, but need to consider\nchanging their thinking and get more training in how to \u201cprevent\u201d the problems\nwe see today in dentistry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are very few things I learned in\ndental school that I still use today. Many of the basic principles are used but\nthere is continuous new data emerging that we as health care providers need to\nexpose ourselves to, and decide on what and how to implement for the benefit of\nour patients. I hope to see major advancements in our approach to oral health\ncare in my career. There is no reason you can\u2019t live to 94 and have a great set\nof teeth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. St. Clair\nmaintains a private dental practice in Rowley and Newburyport dedicated to\nhealth-centered family dentistry. If there are certain topics you would like to\nsee written about or questions you have please email them to him at jpstclair@stclairdmd.com<\/a>.\nYou can view all previously written columns at www.jpeterstclairdentistry.com\/blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently attended a dental continuing education course entitled \u201cHit Man or Healer?\u201d The course was given by a well-known leader in the dental profession. The basic premise of the course was the notion that we have a lot more science, studies, and data available today to be able to make better decisions about the treatment that we dentists recommend to patients. The concept is called evidence-based dentistry. The idea is that if a very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jpeterstclairdentistry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jpeterstclairdentistry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jpeterstclairdentistry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jpeterstclairdentistry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jpeterstclairdentistry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=870"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.jpeterstclairdentistry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":873,"href":"https:\/\/www.jpeterstclairdentistry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions\/873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jpeterstclairdentistry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jpeterstclairdentistry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jpeterstclairdentistry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}