When a Dental Hygiene Visit is “Urgent”

Q: My cardiologist wants me to keep up with my dental cleanings. My current dental office is closed and I am worried.

A: Boy, nothing like spending some quality time with millennial adult children living at home! Firstly, I can’t understand what they are saying. I think I am going deaf. They speak very quickly and most of the words in the sentence all sound alike! Almost like blowing a kazoo with one long breath. I keep hearing my self say: “What?!… What?!”

Bravo to your cardiologist to think that way! I have been told that MD’s spend 7 minutes on the oral cavity in medical school, and many of them have you open and say ahhhhhh for the first part of a physical, but with teeth or gum comments.

There are bountiful studies on the link of untreated periodontal disease to higher risks of cardio vascular disease: strokes, heart attacks, hardening of the arteries, and valve disease. This link also extends to diabetes issues, which result in poor healing after dental implant surgery, extractions and gum treatments.

Although from now until May 8th 2020 many dental offices are only treating emergencies, the president of the Florida Dental Association, Dr. Liddell states two important facts:

• 1: While dental cleanings “aren’t treated like emergencies, there can still be exception. Example: “Someone whose cardiologist needs to make sure a patient’s mouth is disease-free before them a medicine.”
• 2: You do not have to worry about catching the COVID 19 virus during dental treatment. The precautions we take are still in effect since the AIDS epidemic.

What keeps me awake is patients calling all at once as the restrictions are dialed back; especially starting May 8th when dental offices will be performing all procedures.

PLEASE CALL YOUR DENTAL OFFICE NOW TO BOOK YOUR TREATMENT OR HYGIENE VISITS TO AVOID BEING PUT OFF FOR WEEKS OR MONTHS!

I hope you had a great Easter and Passover dinner and wish all of us that we have humans at the table rather than laptops next year! (Although, I do have a few relatives that smell like mothballs.)