School of Dentistry Blog

In a season of depressing news stories, this one still stands out: a 12-year-old boy died because his family couldn’t find a dentist that would take his Medicaid insurance in Maryland, where he lived. A tooth infection spread to his brain, and two brain surgeries failed to save his life. “His emergency treatment cost $250,000, according to the Maryland health department. Treating his toothache would have cost less than $100.”Fortunately (as far as we know, anyway) tragedies like this don’t happen all the time. However: “Tooth decay is the nation’s most common chronic childhood disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It leads to problems with eating, speaking and the ability to learn, as well as pain, poor self-esteem and more than 51 million missed school hours each year, according to the U.S. Surgeon General.”Currently, the funding just isn’t where it needs to be. Dentists and health experts lay most of the blame on Medicaid, saying the state-federal health insurance program for the poor and disabled pays only about half of what dentists charge for their work and not enough to cover expenses.And in these challenging economic times, where states are struggling to get their budgets under control and tame exploding deficits, there’s the temptation to make cuts wherever they can. There are glimmers of hope. Michigan’s Healthy Kids program has demonstrated great success. Dentists get a higher reimbursement rate, they accept more Medicaid patients and more children are seeing dentists than they did under the traditional Medicaid dental plan. And on the federal level:U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is co-sponsor of a bill aimed at preventing another Deamonte Driver tragedy.The bill would seek to establish a “dental home” for every child by increasing dental services in community health centers, training more individuals in pediatric dentistry and offering tax incentives for dentists to treat children with Medicaid.It’s a start…

For more information about Project Homeless Connect, visit http://projecthomelessconnect.com

Dear Esteemed Colleagues,Earlier this week we provided access to dental care for an underserved community in conjunction with Project Homeless Connect (PHC) at the Bill Graham Auditorium. There is a growing unmet need for dental care for our homeless citizens; the target population for this event. At Bill Graham, Dr. Miriam Robins, Magnus Yang, and Ben Yount with the support of other PHC volunteers screened over 60 citizens for oral cancer and performed a clinical diagnosis for cleaning, restorations, or extractions from 7am. The future patients were then transported to our clinic for extractions.Also at Bill Graham, Jenn Santoro assisted Dr. Irene Sung (PHC) provided oral hygeine instruction to almost 50 children and families in the Children’s health education center.At UOP, in the Emergency clinic, Dr. Nattestad and a much larger group of students noted below, with the assistance of support staff, provided extractions for those transported to our clinic; we served 24 patients.Please thank the following core team members for their involvement in planning this event, which served as a benefit to our students, school, and community:Dr. Richard Fredekind, Dr. Eric Salmon, Dr. Anders Nattestad, Dr. Miriam Robins, Ms. Christine Miller, Mr. Robert Trezia, Ms. Debbie Keatley, Mr. Manu Chaudhry, Mr. Nick Hancock (PHC), and Ms. Lindsey Kneuven (PHC).Lastly, please thank the following student volunteers and staff for their time and effort while ensuring the success of this event: Eddie Kuo, Dr. Swati Pappu, Susie Ryan, Jan Yamashiro, Dallas Kromenhoek, John Reed, Adarsh Gandhi, Binh Lam, Bree Kim, Brian Devers, Camelia Cifor, Eric Chen, Paymon Bahrami, Andrew Jang, Nancy Hsu, Michael Jensen, Zandro Alcantara, Kristina Mamou, Maria DeGunto, Suzanne Camp, Cheryl Flores, Dr. Itaya, Farzaneh Farrokhy, Bob McMillan (PHC) and several others. Sincere regards,Manu ChaudhryDDS 2009

While browsing the Web for dental-related information, I came across an intriguing news story in the Journal of the American Medical Association, “Studies Probe Oral HealthDiabetes Link”.

Diabetes, the focus of much attention lately due to its rising incidence, appears to have a particularly close relationship with conditions within the oral cavity. This relationship seems to go both waysdiabetes can lead to unwanted changes in the gums and periodontal tissues, and periodontal diseasesincluding gingivitis and severe periodontitiscan make it more difficult to control diabetes.

It seems that diabetes and gum disease must be tackled together, and dentists and doctors need to collaborate. For example, if a patient is having persistent difficulty getting his or her blood sugar levels under control, the doctor will want to consider the possibility that an infection in the mouth is to blame. And if the dentist finds any gum inflammation, they will need to share that information with the patient’s doctor.

The logistics may be somewhat daunting patients deal with separate insurance companies for medical and dental insurance, if they have dental coverage at all but the payoffs are clear. One study “has found a cost savings in the range of 3% to 8% for individuals who were receiving regular dental care each year compared with those who were not recipients of any preventive or periodontal services.”

The takeaway message: take care of your mouth, and your whole body (and wallet) may benefit.