On the other hand, we have learned a lot about overall medicine and the body and it has been really interesting. Most of our teachers have been from various medical and dental schools around the country. The cool thing is that a lot of the time they are authors of our textbook or have some other experience that helps us out. For example, we had obstetrics and gynecology from 2 ObGyn's from med schools in Washington and New Mexico, Neurology was from a world famous neurologist at UNC who has written 17 textbooks, and our Infection Control was by professors who wrote the guidelines at the CDC.
One of my favorites was our Pathology course from Arizona's lead pathologist Dr. Fischione (A pathologist is a Medical Doctor who studies/diagnoses diseases and performs autopsies), besides pathology he showed us pictures of some of his interesting cases. To keep it short some involved decapitations, electrocutions, famous people, and jumping into wood chippers. Another cool course we had was Head and Neck anatomy were we did a lot of dissections and had to memorize everything. It was awesome to be able dissect everything in the body from brain and muscles to even the eye and nerves. This picture is from one of our course tools and just gives you an idea of all the things we had to memorize.
Now this is usually where people start asking me why a dentist has to learn about all of this? Doesn’t a dentist just pull teeth? So let me answer:
First, Like Physicians, Dentists diagnose and treat viral and bacterial infections along with various other diseases (like cancers or genetic defects etc.) by medical treatment, however the Dental specialties focus on the oral cavity.Second, Dentists need to know enough about medicine to treat patients that are diagnosed with various diseases and recognize symptoms of diseases to make patients aware of them. In many cases the dentist can be the first person to notice signs of lymphoma, leukemia, hypertension, Thrombocytopenia, Diabetes and various other diseases so that he can refer them to get proper medical treatment. Dentists who fail to recognize or understand a patient’s disease can result in the patient’s death. I had a bunch of cool/gross mouth pictures I wanted to put in here, but Heidi made me take them out.
Third, Dentists not only prescribe medications but also treat patients on various meds themselves. In order to do this a dentist needs to know how the entire body reacts to medications and interactions between other medications. Even Ibuprofen can be detrimental to a patient’s health.
Last of all, Oral infections can become systemic (spread to the body). It is sad in the last year that some kids have actually died because they have had an abscess (a necrotic bacterial infection from a cavity that has gone to the root of the tooth) that has gotten into the blood stream and to the brain. Here is an interesting list of some diseases that have been associated with periodontal disease: Dementia, Alzheimer’s, Spontaneous Abortion, still borns, Cardiovascular Disease, Coronary Heart Disease, Arteriosclerosis, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Cerebrovascular disease and stroke.
Now back to my original topic. I have to say that I am going to miss the first year because it has really helped me to know more about family members’ diseases and even helped me treat and diagnose some of my own. (Yes, I've discovered I have at least 5 medical issues, but now I can do things for them and keep them in check) At the beginning of this blog I mentioned that this break marks a change in my dental school and it does. Now we will be doing more hands on dentistry and less homework and tests. Instead we have begun the busy work of practicing restorations like crowns and etc.
The last reason I am excited for change is that we have learned about new dental practices that the future of dentistry holds. One of these is a way for dentists to not just treat patients when they have cavities but to diagnose their problem. for example: Some patients seem to always have cavities and would just go to the dentist for fillings and root canals and then the dentist would pretty much tell them to floss and brush better. Well now the new protocols involve the dentist doing less fillings and restorations but trying to fix the patients problem by testing their saliva, doing bacterial cultures, checking diets, and then prescribing the appropriate medications and treatment for patients. In other words when you go to the dentist he will be doing less fillings and cleanings. Instead you will see him run more tests and prescribe treatments. This new protocol has actually reduced cavities and other problems by 60% and some dentist have already begun to get sued for not practicing it so you should see this pretty soon.
Well that's all folks! Thanks for sticking it out, all of you who did. I know it was a little science-y, but hey, it's my life.
-Aaron
9 comments:
Yay Aaron! Thanks for posting. Felicity will be interested to read this although she will be disappointed there won't be so many teeth to pull if/when she becomes a dentist.
Good job surviving the first year! I'll tell Adam to read your post because I'm sure he'll be totally into it. (Is he already old school now??)
That's really cool, although I was hoping that you'd actually met a dentist named Crentist.
congrats making it through the first year almost. i heard the first year is really tough. and congrats to heidi, too. being a stay at home mommy with a busy husband is hard work!
I remember asking you that same question: "Doesn't a dentist just pull teeth?" and you informed that I was very uninformed. Now I am informed.
But now that you've told everybody else, they're all informed too. So I'm no longer smarter than everyone else, which was the one thing that I could still hold on to. Nice going.
Aaron, so is your dentist really named "Crentist?" also, what kind of drugs are we talking about prescribing here?
2 things I liked about the post:
1. You apologized for the length of the post, as if this is required reading. For me, the longer the post, the better. I find blogs of friends and family to be much more interesting than most anything else on the web.
2. You always capitalized "Dentist", as if it is deity. You can say this was a mistake, but I know better.
That is quite interesting. I never bothered to ask Helaman why he spent 4 years learning how to pull teeth. Now I should ask him why he is spending 6 more years doing something else.
And best comments awards go to Brian and Kent.
Lol.
I was actually interested in what dentists have to learn. I think that's cool that they're doing procedural changes to help prevent cavities from occurring in the first place.
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