Month: December 2012

You will want to be on this month’s Hygiene Mastermind call…or at least listen to the recording.

There is some critical information about caries prevention and remineralization and in my experience speaking and coaching across the country, much of this information has not been heard by a large portion of the dental profession.

Bottom line, there’s a lot more to preventing cavities than fluoride and if you’re not addressing these foundational oral environment issues, the effectiveness of the fluoride treatment is compromised.

Here’s a fantastic resource written by our speaker, Dr. Brian Novy.  After you scroll down to see the details of the call, click here to download his article ‘Dental Caries: a pH-mediated disease’.

Dr. Novy is a highly sought-after speaker, professor and clinical dentist and he’s going to give us some practical, real-world ways to implement CAMBRA and effective caries prevention strategies AND how you can better understand the caries process and how it’s about more than diet and homecare.

Consider joining the Hygiene Profits Mastermind for a 2-month free trial so you can be sure and hear this information.

“If Plaque Could Talk”
with special guest Dr. Brian Novy

Our understanding of dental caries is exploding at an astonishing rate.  The idea of assessing caries risk has been around for more than a decade, but only a handful of clinicians are able to transition from the risk assessment to appropriate prevention.  If you find yourself saying, “Brush better, don’t eat sweets, and use more fluoride,” then you’re probably really frustrated. This course will change the way you think about cariology and minimally invasive dentistry.

This call will cover:

• Caries prevention/treatment includes pH modification
• Patients should be treated individually based on the physiology of the mouth
• When fluoride hasn’t worked to prevent disease, it’s time to consider alternatives
• The focus of prevention is creating new biofilm, not simply removing the existing biofilm

Date: Thursday, December 20

Time: 1:00pm Eastern

CE credits are provided by Inspired Hygiene.
Inspired Hygiene is designated as an Approved PACE Program Provider by the Academy of General Dentistry. The formal continuing dental education programs of this program provider are accepted by the AGD for Fellowship, Mastership and membership maintenance credit. Approval does not imply acceptance by a state or provincial board of dentistry or AGD endorsement.
The current term of approval extends from 6/1/2010 to 5/31/2014.

If you’re not already a member of our Mastermind group, the first 2 months are FREE.  Click here to sign up.

Stay Inspired,
Rachel

Isn’t it frustrating when you’ve just seated a recall patient and the first words out of their mouth are, “I only want a cleaning today”?  You explain they haven’t had x-rays or an exam for 18 months and they still say, “Just clean my teeth”.  When asked why they don’t want x-rays and exam, these patients almost always say, “Because you always ‘find’ something wrong!” Wouldn’t it be nice if you could avoid this situation all together?

Let’s look at this from the patients’ point of view for a moment.  Bob comes in toady for what he believes is ‘just a cleaning’.  We do the necessary diagnostics, and Bob has needs, which we point out to him.

It goes something like this, “Bob, I found a crack on your LR molar and a leaking filling on the tooth next to it.  Here let me show you.”

Meanwhile, Bob is thinking ‘Here they go again, looking for problems.  That’s why they aways find something!’

Then the doctor comes in to do the exam and asks our ‘findings’ were!

Think with me on this!  The patient has no pain, no bleeding at home, no problems as far as they’re concerned and then we ‘poke’ around and voila, we find something.  To the patient it appears as though we are on a scavenger hunt, trying to find all the things wrong with their teeth & gums.

The truth is, the patient walked in the door with the problem.
We didn’t find it, the patient has it!

The words we use can have a huge psychological impact on the patient!  Next time you are sharing your clinical observations with the patient, try saying something along these lines:

“Bob, you have a crack on this tooth!”

“Bob, you have several 6mm pockets and bleeding in this area!”

“Bob, how long has this tooth back here been cracked?

“How long have you had this gum infection on the lower right?”

Set your intention now to stop using the ‘F’ word and replace it with YOU HAVE!

Stay Inspired,
Kim