Digital x-rays and sharing information.

You should be very interested in this subject. As a patient, digital information enables you to have your records taken and maintained extremely efficiently. The digital x-rays that my office takes, expose you to only one third of the radiation that the more conventional other types of digital systems need. We use a phosphor plate system which is also more convenient and comfortable. The plates that we use are sealed in plastic envelopes and then processed in a few seconds. This allows for the images to be read almost immediately and, if needed, be retaken to get the best image possible. If an x-ray needs to be retaken, then you are still exposed to 1/3 less radiation than one image would require with a totally electronic system. From my perspective this is something that is taken for granted due to the fact that we have been using our phosphor sensor system for close to 3 years now.

Just yesterday we had a patient in our office that needed to be sent to a specialist. We took a couple of x-rays and then emailed those directly to the specialist for review before the patient even arrived in spite of the fact that he left our office and went directly to the other doctor's office. What a wonderful benefit!

We can transfer these images to other continents or provide them to patients who are traveling. They can easily be attached to emails just like photos. The images can be stored in a patient's home computer or on their thumb drive. We typically send the images as 'jpeg' files which are the same as your digital photos. This means that they can be viewed on your home computer if you wish.

We also backup all of the office data on a daily basis and have the data, when taken, stored on a computer server at our office which has a dual hard drive 'RAID' system built into it. 'RAID' means literally, "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives". If our computer server has a hard drive failure then it notifies us of the problem and still has a good copy of the data on the 2nd drive. The backup that we make daily is a placed on a portable drive that goes home with me daily. We rotate 5 drives from home to office in order to have multiple copies for the ultimate in safety.

This discussion was prompted by one of our patients that was in on Monday. If you have something that is of interest to you that you would like to see me discuss here, please let me know.

Implant Restorations & Longevity.

I have been restoring implants for many years. Of the implants that I have restored there was one that was restored about 20 years ago on which the crown and support structures loosened. There is a key component which is designed to hold indefinitely. It in essence 'cold welds' the tooth portion of the replacement to the root portion which is the surgically placed implant. This technology has improved to the point where the implant manufacturers no longer recommend placement of crowns for implant restorations with remvable or temporary cement. All of the crowns placed in my office on implant restorations done recently are secured with bonding materials and resin based, virtually insoluble cements. They should not come loose or have any degradation for 2 to 3 lifetimes according to scientific research.

Recently we saw a patient of ours [who is new to our office within the last 2 years] who has many implant restorarions. Within a couple of weeks he had 2 crowns come loose from implant replacements. Both of these crowns are now secured with resin based bonding materials and he shouldn't have this problem any longer.

It is best to follow the manufacturers recommendations and I believe in keeping up with the latest technology and refinements in dental treatment. I attend many continuing education courses and do a lot of professional journal reading as well as follow my profession in other ways. Our relatively new patient should not have any more problems with the 2 most recently secured crowns on his dental implants.

Growing new teeth in mice.

Mike Melnick sent me this link to an interesting article.

http://health.msn.com/blogs/daily-dose-post.aspx?post=1215105

Research is moving ahead on many fronts.

Things keep getting better and better!

Fighting decay with 'sweets'.

We have recently seen a couple of patients who had developed some pretty thoughtless habits that nearly caused some very serious problems. One person was having some digestive problems and was consuming sugary mints quite regularly and the other was developing a dry mouth in the middle of the night and quenching his thirst with a sugary energy drink.

The individual with the energy drink habit is a senior high school student. He wanted to drink something that had a cap on it so that when he was thirsty in the middle of the night he wouldn't need to get up to go get something to drink. Unfortunately he chose an energy drink that had quite a bit of sugar. Apparently this didn't give him a sugar rush of energy that disturbed his sleep. Perhaps he was just drinking small sips from time to time in the middle of the night. Regardless, this nice young man came in for a check-up and noticed that his upper back teeth were feeling a little rough. On examination his back upper teeth both had large, deep cavities. When the decay was removed, one of them had decay just barely touching the nerve. When this happens there is about a 50% chance of this tooth needing a root canal in the future. I used the most sedative procedures possible when restoring this tooth and so far the root canal isn't needed. We are both hoping it won't be necessary in the future. There were 3 other cavities in his mouth that needed fillings that fortunately weren't nearly as deep.

The other patient is a 60 year old friend of mine from the area who was having some sensitivity with his last tooth on the lower right. It was so sensitive that it required much more anesthetic than is usually necessary. It was also decayed fairly deep below the gum line making the filling of this tooth much more difficult. Fortunately in this case the nerve was not touched/exposed by removal of the decay. However, the tooth was still quite sensitive for some weeks after treatment. It seems to be growing less sensitive with time which is an excellent sign. This patient had a total of 9 teeth with cavities in them. We are still finishing the cavities that aren't as deep as those that we had to deal with on an emergency basis.

We are recommending xylitol containing products for people that are consuming sweets. Xylitol should be the first ingredient listed when you are shopping for one of these products as Heidi our hygienist points out. Xylitol has been shown to help dramatically reduce decay when added to one's diet. This ingredient can actually help heal small cavities that have already started in teeth. Xylitol is naturally occurring in our bodies and is contained naturally in many foods. Up to 15 grams a day is safe for everyone. It also tastes great in contrast to many artificial sweetenters. The recommended amount to be consumed daily is 5 to 15 grams.

Sweets can be good for you too! You just need the right kind of sweets!